Bear attack leaves one person dead, two injured

March 17 (UPI) -- Two people were hospitalized after being attacked by a bear in Slovakia, officials reported Sunday. The Environment Ministry may propose making the animals easier to hunt to reduce their population.

A 49-year-old woman suffered a wound to her shoulder and a 72-year-old man was treated for a gash on his hand from the bear in the town of Liptovsky Mikuláš, emergency services said.

Police drove the bear out of town, they reported.

Videos posted on social media showed the bear bounding along a road, and in one, lunging at a man on the pavement.

A day prior to the latest attack, a 31-year-old Belarussian woman apparently fell to her death trying to escape a brown bear in the nearby Low Tatra mountains.

She and a male companion had been walking in the thickly forested area when the bear approached them.

The man and woman fled in different directions. A rescue dog found the victim's body shortly after the male hiker called authorities for help.

There have been several relatively recent bear attacks in Slovakia including a fatal one in 2021. The country had not reported a lethal bear attack in more than a century.

Improved protections in Central and Eastern Europe have meant bears have returned to their natural habitats across the Carpathian mountain range, which stretches from Romania through western Ukraine and to Slovakia and Poland.

The uptick in human-bear interactions has prompted the Environment Ministry to consider calling on the European Union to loosen protections for bears, making it easier to hunt them in an attempt to reduce their numbers and lower the threat of such encounters.

The ministry has said it may revisit the bears' status on the protected species list, arguing their increasing numbers mean they are no longer endangered and can be selectively hunted, culling the herds.

Researchers have argued there has been no sharp increase in Slovakia's bear population, which they say remains stable at around 1,275.