Bear lovers scored a key victory Thursday after French authorities secretly helicoptered a Slovenian she-bear into the Pyrenees mountains.

The bear was flown over roadblocks erected by irate local farmers who say the beasts pose a threat to their flocks.

Conservationists hope the female, soon to be joined by a second, will prevent the bear population from dying out in the western Pyrenees as only two lonesome males - father and son - are left in the area.

But a group of angry farmers wielding shepherding staffs had set up bales of hay and tractors along key roads into the Pyrenees from France to Spain, and had spent the night manning roadblocks in a bid to stop them being trucked in.

"It's war," said large letters daubed in white paint across the road.

"We saw the helicopter over Etsaut. It was hovering and let down a cage," said Olivier Maurin, a local sheep farmer and organiser of the anti-bear protest.

Mr Maurin said farmers intended to launch a “hunt” in the woods, not to kill but to scare the bears away from their sheep and other livestock.