A brown bear (file photo)
(Picture: Pays de l'Ours/AFP via Getty Ima)A 57-year old man was killed by a brown bear in central Slovakia, in what a state forestry company described as the country's first confirmed deadly attack from a wild bear population that has tripled in 20 years.
"An autopsy confirmed today that the man from Liptovska Luzna died from injuries caused by this predator," forestry company Lesy Slovenske Republiky said on Facebook.
Bears are common in Slovak mountains, and their numbers have swollen to estimated 2,760 last year from below 900 two decades ago, said the forestry company, which has argued for legal hunting of bears to manage their population.
The country's environment ministry said the bear's DNA samples would be collected to identify the animal. It said there had been five bear attacks on people last year but none lethal.
News website www.sme.sk reported the man had gone missing after going for a walk in the forest near the village of Liptovska Luzna in the Low Tatras mountains.
"We found him lying on his stomach beside a trail," the website quoted a friend of the victim, Matej Bodor, as saying. "He had been bitten in his throat. He had been bitten in his belly, in his ribs."
That news website described it as Slovakia's first known deadly bear attack for at least a century, while public news agency TASR called it the first such incident in Slovakia's modern history.
