(Reuters) – The Slovak government on Wednesday approved the shooting of 350 bears this year after a rising number of attacks by the brown bears, whose population has grown over the past several years, Prime Minister Robert Fico said.
The central European country is home to a bear population in its many mountain areas, numbering between 1,000 and 3,000 according to different estimates.
Last week, a bear killed a 59-year-old man who was out walking near the central town of Detva, Slovak media reported, the latest in a string of attacks on people over the past several years.
“We cannot live in a country where people will be afraid to go to the forest, where people become food for bears,” Fico said at a media briefing shown live on Facebook.
The Environment Ministry has said it planned to follow the example of Romania, which has used quotas and more than doubled the number of bears allowed to be killed to 481 last year.
Last year, Slovakians shot 144 bears, a rise from single-digit numbers in the previous years. The government recorded 13 attacks on people last year.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
