Bears Attempt to Break into Houses in High Tatras

Bratislava, April 8 (TASR) – Vysoke Tatry (High Tatras) town council on Friday declared a state of emergency due to the frequent appearance of bears in inhabited areas, including five attempts by bears to break into people’s houses.

Vysoke Tatry mayor Jan Mokos at a press conference on Friday stressed that it’s necessary to deal with the bears’ brazen behaviour.

“We have had occurrences of brown bears here in the past, but they had never approached inhabited zones so frequently. They were only roaming on roads and pathways. Nonetheless, we’ve already got as many as five complaints that they attempted to break in into houses, and in two cases they even attacked dogs at homes. We’re also concerned about their movement around nursery and primary schools,” said Mokos.

“The number of bears has been steadily rising, there are hundreds of them at the moment,” said town police commander Miroslav Kolodzej, adding that the authorities will send written recommendations on how to deal with bears to every household. For example, people should be cautious to appear near waste containers after it gets dark.

According to Mokos, the town authority isn’t authorised to shoot bears. There has been a ban on hunting bears for almost 25 years and experts say there are now some 1,400 bears in the wild in Slovakia.