The bear attacked on passers-by/unsplash
In the Slovak city of Liptovský Mikuláš, a bear attacked passers-by for the second time in the last three days. Two people are in the hospital.
As a result of the animal attack, a 49-year-old woman suffered a shoulder injury, and a 72-year-old man was treated for a head wound. The police drove the bear from the city to the forest. This is reported by the BBC.
Videos of the incident, which appeared on social networks, show a bear running along the road, and in one of them, it rushes at a person lying on the sidewalk.
The publication noted that in recent years in Slovakia, a number of bear attacks, including one fatal attack in 2021, the nation's first in a century.
Improvements in environmental protection in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 mean bears have returned to their natural habitats across the Carpathian mountain range, which stretches from Romania through Western Ukraine to Slovakia and Poland, the report said.
Representatives of Slovakia's populist-nationalist coalition called for the protection of bears to be weakened in order to regulate the growth of their numbers through hunting.
In response, the Ministry of the Environment said that, together with Romania, it will present at the next meeting of the Council of Environment Ministers of the EU a proposal to transfer bears on the protected species list because their numbers mean they are no longer endangered and can be selectively hunted.
Bear in the center of Liptovský Mikuláš #ThisIsSlovakia
: Marika Trnkova Bizubova/Facebook #medved #bear #medvednica #medveľ #slovensko #slovakia #liptovskymikulas #danger #wildlife #animal #bears pic.twitter .com/kx76SmFJUZ
— This Is Slovakia (@ThisIsSlovakia_) March 17, 2024