A 19-year-old woman died in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains after being attacked by a bear, Romanian news agency Mediafax reported on Wednesday.
She was dragged away by the wild animal while hiking in the Bucegi massif south of Brașov on Tuesday evening, a witness reported who then made an emergency call.
Less than an hour later, mountain rescuers and police came and recovered the woman's body.
They shot the bear, as it had also tried to attack the rescue workers, the report said.
Around 8,000 brown bears live in Romania's Carpathian Mountains, according to government estimates. The nation has the second-largest bear population in Europe, after Russia.
The animals, facing increasing urbanization and encroachment of human activities, have in Romania repeatedly attacked hikers, invaded farms and rummaged through rubbish bins in cities including Brașov in search of food.
After the latest death, Romania's Environment Minister Mircea Fechet called for higher shooting quotas for bears. As minister, he had demanded an annual quota of 500 animals, but after consultation with other institutions, this figure was lowered to 220.
Aggressive bears are repeatedly brought to other regions of Romania by the authorities but this method does not help, Fechet told the Antena 3 CNN radio station. It only leads to "shifting the problem from one county to another."
DPA
Comment: Agence France-Presse
reported on July 15:
Romania's parliament has approved the culling of almost 500 bears this year in an effort to control the "overpopulation" of the protected species after a deadly attack on a hiker sparked nationwide outcry.
The country is home to 8,000 brown bears, according to the environment ministry, Europe's largest brown bear population outside Russia.
Bears have killed 26 people and severely injured 274 others over the past 20 years in Romania, the ministry said this year.
After a young hiker was mauled to death on a popular trail in Romania's Carpathian mountains last week, the prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, summoned lawmakers back from their summer recess to attend an emergency session of parliament.
As well as adopting legislation on Monday to control the brown bear population, the parliament held a moment of silence in the 19-year-old hiker's memory.
See also this small selection of similar reports from across the world in recent years indicating perhaps an increasing trend in such aggressive behavior:
Many more such records can be under the Topics-Animal heading located
here. Reports of attacks by other species, such as dogs, elephants, sharks, alligators, bison, kangaroos, hyenas, leopards, cougars, tigers, pythons and sundry others (some non-fatal but atypical) have also been compiled - with the database going back to 2006.
Comment: Agence France-Presse reported on July 15: See also this small selection of similar reports from across the world in recent years indicating perhaps an increasing trend in such aggressive behavior:
- Bear attacks in Japan are at a record high - 212 people attacked, 6 killed in 2023
- Brown bear attacks group of campers, killing and eating one in southern central Russia
- Sloth bear mauls couple to death, eats their bodies in Madhya Pradesh, India
- 2 people killed in bear attack in Ulsan, South Korea
- Grizzly bear attacks, kills camper in western Montana - 9th fatal bear attack within the last year for North America
- Bear attacks increasing worldwide
Many more such records can be under the Topics-Animal heading located here. Reports of attacks by other species, such as dogs, elephants, sharks, alligators, bison, kangaroos, hyenas, leopards, cougars, tigers, pythons and sundry others (some non-fatal but atypical) have also been compiled - with the database going back to 2006.