Close encounters with brown bears are extremely rare, and encounters that end with the death of the person are even rarer, but, unfortunately, they can happen. On Monday 14th June, a man was found dead in the Low Tatras, close to Liptovska Luzna (Slovakia). The man went for a walk in the forest the day before and did not come back home. The autopsy suggests that the injuries received from a bear were the cause of his death. As in any other criminal investigation, a recommended procedure by bear experts in these cases is to confirm genetically that it was a bear and, if possible, to identify the individual in question.
In a period of 16 years (2000-2016), brown bears in Slovakia have caused injuries to humans on 54 occasions; with no fatalities among them (Haring 2018). Attacks in Slovakia seemed to peak in June and be more frequent in weekends than on weekdays, as this case shows. Encounters with a female with cubs and sudden and unexpected encounters are the most common scenarios for bear attacks worldwide. Most bear attacks are defensive. Of the attacks recorded in Europe, 6.6% were fatal (Bombieri et al. 2019).
These sad and unfortunate events are systematically followed by claims that bear hunting is needed, accelerated by (social) media. There is no scientific evidence that hunting will prevent bear attacks. A study on brown bear attacks worldwide showed no difference in the number of attacks between “bear hunting” and “bear non-hunting” countries (Bombieri et al. 2019). Actually, bear hunting is a risky activity that is associated with attacks. In Scandinavia, hunters were the social group most prone to bear attacks. In a 40 year period (1997-2016) 33 out of 42 bear attacks recorded (79%) happened during hunting (Støen et al. 2018). This Scandinavian study did not find a clear relationship between the number of attacks on non-hunters and the number of brown bears in the population. In the High Tatras, the last fatal attacks date back to 1927, when just few bears inhabited the area.
While the rationale that more bears may cause more attacks is an easy one, the reality is more complex than that. For parallelism, it is like to think that a reduction in the human population would reduce the number of crimes, while we know that numerous interacting factors play a role in human crimes. The problem behavior of some particular individual bears is something that should not be forgotten. The selective removal of the animal that has been repeatedly involved in attacks to humans is a standard procedure, but it should be that particular bear the one removed, not any bear in the population. Habituated or food-conditioned bears may be more often involved in attacks on people. If we are really serious about reducing the probability of bear attacks, and not just about justifying bear hunting, we should tackle immediately the way we manage rubbish and food waste, as well as the artificial feeding of bears and wildlife. Finally, humans should also be “managed”. People should walk in established trails, better than randomly across the forest; if they go picking mushrooms or antlers, walking across the forest, then, making noise indicating their presence, avoiding fast approaches to dense vegetation spots, where bears can be resting, walking in groups instead of alone and carrying bear spray are sensible habits. In almost 300 experimental approaches of researchers on foot to resting GPS-collared bears, none of the bears reacted aggressively and all moved away, being seen only in 14% of the cases (Ordiz et al. 2013). Bears will always do everything not to encounter people.
Reducing brown bear attacks requires using all available scientific evidence and a more complex view than simplistic hunting. But most of all, it requires political will and to stop the indolence of the public administration. Coexistence is possible, but it should be wanted.
For more information on how to behave in encounters with bears, click here. Keep in mind that the probability of being killed by a human is 90 thousand times higher than that of being killed by a bear.