Slovakia in rear plans to shoot 350 bears after the man was killed in attack

The Slovak cabinet approved a plan to shoot about a quarter of the country's brown bears after the man was mallass to death while walking in a forest in Central Slovakia.

Prime Minister Robert Fico's populist government has announced after a cabinet meeting that 350 of approximately a population of 1300 brown bears will be killed, citing the danger to humans after a number of attacks.

“We cannot live in a country where people are afraid to enter the forest,” the prime minister told reporters.

A special emergency, which allows the bears to be shot, has already been expanded to 55 of 79 districts of Slovakia, an area that now covers the bigger part of the country.

The Bratislava government has already loosened legal protection, allowing bears to be killed if they deviate too close to human habitation. About 93 were shot dead by the end of 2024.

The filming plans were even more convicted by environmentalists, who stated that the decision was in violation of international obligations and could be illegal.

“It's absurd,” says Michal Wezek, an environmentalist and MEP for the Progressive Slovakia of the Opposition Party.

“The Ministry of Environment has failed desperately to limit the number of swelling attacks from the unprecedented weaning of this protected species,” he told the BBC.

“To cover up its failure, the government decided to gather even more bears,” he continued.

Wiezek claims that thousands of meetings have traveled without incidents for one year and he hopes the European Commission will intervene.

The Slovak police confirmed on Wednesday that a man found dead in a forest near the town of Detva in Central Slovakia on Sunday night was killed by a bear. His wounds were in line with the attack.

The 59-year-old man was reported to have disappeared on Saturday after failing to return from a walk in the forest.

He was found with what the authorities described as “devastating head injuries”. Proof of a bear day were found nearby, a local non -governmental organization told the Slovak newspaper Novy CAS.

Bears have become a political issue in Slovakia after a growing number of meetings, including fatal attacks.

In March 2024, a 31-year-old Belarus woman fell into a ravine and died while pursued by a bear in Northern Slovakia.

A few weeks later, a large brown bear was filmed in a video passing through the center of the nearby town of Liptovski Mikolas in wide daylight, restricting along the cars and throwing himself at the people on the sidewalk.

Later, authorities claimed that they had hunted and killed the animal, although environmentalists said that there was later clear evidence that they had shot another bear.

Environment Minister Tomash Taraba said on Wednesday that there were more than 1,300 bears in Slovakia and that 800 was “enough” as the population is increasing.

However, experts say the population remains more or less stable in about 1.270 animals.

Bears are common in the Carpathian mountain range, which extends into an arc from Romania through Western Ukraine and Slovakia and Poland.