Slovakia Backs plans to shoot 350 bear after the man was killed in the attack

The Slovak Cabinet approved a plan to shoot a quarter of brown bears in the country, after a man was subjected to death while walking in a forest in the center of Slovakia.

The government of Prime Minister Robert Fico, after the cabinet meeting, announced that 350 of up to 1300 brown bears will be executed, indicating the danger to humans after a series of attacks.

The Prime Minister told reporters after that: “We cannot live in a country where people are afraid to go to the forest.”

A special emergency has been expanded that allows the bears to be shot to 55 areas from 79 areas in Slovakia, which is now covering most of the countries.

The government in Bratislava has already eased legal protection, which allowed the bears to be killed if it is based on the proximity of human housing. About 93 was shot by the end of 2024.

The shooting plans were convicted of more by conservative specialists, who said the decision violates international obligations and may be illegal.

“It is ridiculous,” Michel Wizke, an environment scientist and MEP.

“The Ministry of Environment failed desperately to reduce the number of bear attacks by an unprecedented execution of this protected type,” he told the BBC.

“To cover up their failure, the government decided to prevent more bears.”

Wizke argued that thousands of meetings in the year passed without an accident, and he expressed his hope that the European Commission would intervene.

Slovak police confirmed on Wednesday that a man found dead in the forest near the town of Diva in the center of Slovakia on Sunday evening was killed by a bear. His wounds were consistent with the attack.

The 59 -year -old was reported on Saturday after failing to return from walking in the forest.

It was found with what the authorities described as “devastating injuries in the head.” Evidence of the bear’s den was found nearby, according to a local non -governmental organization told Slovak Novaper Novy Cas.

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

In March 2024, a 31 -year -old Belarusian woman fell in a valley and died while she was chased by a bear in northern Slovakia.

After several weeks, a large brown bear was taken on a video that passes through the center of the town of LIPTOVSKY MIKOLAs, near broad daylight, as it was connecting cars and recovering people on the sidewalk.

The authorities later claimed that they had retreated and killed the animal, although the conservative specialists later said that there was clear evidence that they had shot a different bear.

Environment Minister Thomas Taraaba said on Wednesday that there are more than 1,300 bears in Slovakia, and that 800 were “sufficient number”, where the population was growing.

However, experts say the population is still more or less in about 1,270 animals.

Bears are common through the carp mountain chain, which extends in a bow of Romania via western Ukraine, to Slovakia and Poland.