A rampaging brown bear that injured five people in the Slovakian town of Liptovský Mikuláš has been shot down by an armed patrol, Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba said on Wednesday.
According to Taraba, the bear injured a 49-year-old woman and a 72-year-old man, both of whom required hospital treatment, and another three victims, including a 10-year-old girl who suffered minor cuts and bruises.
There have been several bear attacks in Slovakia in recent days. On March 16, two people were chased by a bear in the village of Demanovská Dolina in the district of Liptovská Dolina leading to the death of a woman.
According to the Slovak rescue services, the woman’s death was not directly caused by the bear, but by a fall while fleeing. Two days later, another bear attack occurred, injuring the five people mentioned above.
Eventually, the bear was tracked down with drones using special biometric software.
Similarly to Romania, Slovakia also has a significant bear problem in the Carpathian mountain range due to the protected status of the animals, which both countries are now asking the European Union to reclassify, thereby allowing for selective culling.
In recent years, the number of bear attacks in Slovakia has increased, and in 2021 the first fatal bear attack in more than a century happened in the Banskô Valley.
