Slovakia has decided to shoot 350 brown bears after a man lost his life in an attack.
According to BBC, the Slovak cabinet approved a plan to cull around one quarter of the bears following the fatal attack in a Central Slovakia forest.
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Prime Minister Robert Fico's populist-nationalist government announced the decision after a cabinet meeting that decided to cull 350 bears out of an estimated population of 1,300 bears, citing danger to people.
He told reporters, “We can't live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods.”
A special state of emergency rule that allows the shooting of bears has now widened to 55 of Slovakia's 79 districts.
The decision was condemned and criticised by conservationists who said the plan to kill bears violates international obligations and could be illegal.
Michal Wiezek, an ecologist and MEP for the opposition party Progressive Slovakia, told BBC, “It's absurd. The Environment Ministry failed desperately to limit the number of bear attacks by the unprecedented culling of this protected species. To cover up their failure, the government has decided to cull even more bears.”
Notably, the government in Bratislava has already allowed the killing of the bears that are staying close to human habitation. After the government loosened legal protections, some 93 bears have been shot by the end of 2024.
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