Slovakia’s backs plan to shoot 350 bears after the man’s attack

The Slovak closet approved a shooting plan about a quarter of the country’s brown bears after the man was killed to death while walking in the forest in Central Slovakia.

Subsequently, at the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Prime Minister Robert Fika announced after a meeting of the Cabinet that 350 of the estimated population of 1300 brown bears would be collected, citing a danger to people after a number of attacks.

“We cannot live in a country where people are afraid to go to the forest,” the Prime Minister told reporters afterwards.

A special state of emergencies that allows the shooting of the bears already expanded to 55 of the 79 districts of Slovakia, the district, which now covers most of the country.

The government in Bratislava has already weakened the legal protection that allowed the killing of bears when they stray too close to human residence. By the end of 2024, 93 were shot dead.

The plans to shoot even more were convicted by environmentalists who said the decision violated international commitments and may be illegal.

“This is inappropriate,” said Michal Vizak, ecologist and deputy of the opposition party of progressive Slovakia.

“The Ministry of Environment failed to restrict the number of bears attacks by the unprecedented appeal of this protective species,” he said to the BBC.

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

Wisacus claimed that thousands of meetings were held without incidents a year, and he hoped the European Commission was interfering.

Slovak police confirmed on Wednesday that the man had found a dead in the forest near the city in Central Slovakia on Sunday night. His wounds corresponded to the attack.

A 59-year-old man was reportedly missing on Saturday after he did not return from a walk through the woods.

He was found with the fact that the authorities called “devastating head injuries”. The bear’s certificate was found nearby, a local non -governmental organization reported Slivak Novy Cas.

Bears became a political problem in Slovakia after the number of meetings, including deadly attacks.

In March 2024, a 31-year-old Belarusian woman fell into a ravine and died, pursuing a bear in northern Slovakia.

A few weeks later, a large brown bear was made on a video that passed through the center of the nearby city of Liptovsky Nikolas in the shore of daylight, judging the past cars and rushing at the sidewalk.

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

Environmental Minister Tomas Tarab said there were more than 1300 bears in Slovakia, and that 800 was “sufficient” because the population is growing.

However, experts point out that the population remains more stable at about 1270 animals.

The bears are common throughout the Carpathian mountain range, which stretches in the arc from Romania through Western Ukraine and Slovakia and Poland.