The sad news about the fatal bear attack yesterday (23.04.2026) reminds us how important is to know how to reduce the probability of encountering a bear and how to behave during a close encounter- especially with the May long weekend is approaching.<\/p>\n
Bear attacks – especially fatal ones- are extremely rare. The last fatal bear attack in Poland occurred in 2014 in Olszanica and involved a severely wounded bear. Prior to that, the previous fatal incident dates back to 1927 in the Tatra region, when the bear population was very small (around 10 individuals).<\/p>\n
Bear attacks are typically the result of a chain of unfortunate circumstances rather than a single cause. Attributing such incidents just to the number of bears is an oversimplification.<\/p>\n
Bears will always avoid encountering people (unless they are habituated and\/or food-conditioned). In an experimental study conducted in Scandinavia, researchers approached 52 GPS-collared bears nearly 300 times; in all cases the bears escaped, and in only 16% of the approaches the researchers could see or hear the animal.<\/p>\n
In Poland, people walking off-trail, including antler collectors, appear to be among the groups most frequently involved in bear attacks. The main recommendations are: do not go off-trail, avoid going when it is dark or windy, and never let your dog run free. If you need to go off-trail, stay alert and make yourself detectable and visible. If you spot any sign of a bear, such as scats, a resting site or a freshly marked tree, or if you hear or see a bear, leave the area. You can find more detailed instructions in our website<\/a> and in this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The sad news about the fatal bear attack yesterday (23.04.2026) reminds us how important is to know how to reduce the probability of encountering a bear and how to behave during a close encounter- especially with the May long weekend is approaching. Bear attacks – especially fatal ones- are extremely rare. The last fatal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2846,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2845\/revisions\/2846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpathianbear.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}