A she-bear with her cubs attacked a man picking mushrooms in west-central Slovakia, local media reported on Saturday. The injured man was taken to hospital.
The incident took place in the village of Kanianka in the Trenčín region, in a difficult-to-access and heavily forested area. A helicopter was sent for a 67-year-old man. When rescuers arrived at the scene, he was conscious. He was transported to hospital with wounds to his arms and legs. According to preliminary information, the mushroom picker was supposed to scare the bear, which felt threatened and attacked him.
The police appealed on social media to local residents to refrain from going out in the same forest area.
A special intervention team was sent to the site to analyze the incident and assess whether the bear regularly appears near human habitations and poses a threat to residents and animals. Based on such an analysis, a decision can be made to eliminate the problematic individual.
Another bear attack this month
This is another brown bear attack in Slovakia recently. At the beginning of October, the animal fatally injured a 63-year-old man picking mushrooms near Liptovský Mikułaš. It was the second such accident in the history of Slovakia. The first one took place in 2021 also near this town.
The authorities in Bratislava want to regulate the bear population and are demanding at the EU forum that the regulations regarding their protection be relaxed. Environment Minister Tomasz Taraba believes that bear attacks are related, among other things, to the growing population of this species. However, the upward trend is not confirmed by scientific research.
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