Rampaging Slovak bear shot dead after injuring five

Video footage of the bear bounding through the streets of Liptovsky Mikulas went viral. It took ten days to track down the brown bear. The bear injured five people during a rampage in a Slovak town. The country’s environment minister says the bear was shot dead.

A drone and biometric technology were used to identify the bear. The bear was captured on numerous photos and videos as it ran through the streets of the northern Slovak town. A state of alert with heightened police patrols was declared in the region last week as a preventative measure against similar attacks. Five people, including a 10-year-old girl, were injured, and two were taken to hospital with gashes and scratches.

One woman told a local paper she had been left traumatised by the attack. Some members of Slovakia’s populist nationalist government said the incident proved the need to loosen EU environmental protections. The ministry plans - together with Romania - to appeal to EU colleagues to allow selective culling of bears. Better environmental protection in central and eastern Europe since the fall of communism in 1989 has meant bears have returned to their natural habitats.

Researchers say there has been no explosion in Slovakia’s bear population, which they say remains stable at around 1,275.