A Slovakian woman has died following a bear attack in Belarus. When the incident occurred, the 31-year-old was hiking with a companion through a dense forest in the Low Tatras mountains. The Slovakian Mountain Rescue Service explained that when the couple encountered the bear, they both ran in different directions, and the bear gave chase, following her.
Rescue services set out to find the woman using service dogs, a brown bear response specialist, and avalanche experts. The team utilized thermal imaging drones to survey the region until eventually locating the female victim in a ravine. The bear was still close by, but police officers scared it away with a gunshot.
Police transported the body to the nearby town of Lúčky to conduct an inquiry into the exact cause of death and the surrounding circumstances.
Just hours after the fatal bear assault, five more people suffered injuries when an animal rampaged through Liptovsky Mikulas in the north of the country. A 49-year-old woman endured shoulder damage, a 72-year-old man suffered head injuries, and three others were left with scratches and bruises after the sizeable brown bear came down from the mountains, behaving aggressively.
Town officials declared a state of emergency, and officers used drones to seek out the beast, with orders to kill it.
The brown bear is a large species most commonly found in Eastern regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. The enormous creatures weigh up to 1,500 pounds and are around 6.5 feet long. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature describes the animals as intelligent and capable of communicating with each other through sounds, smells, and scratch marks on trees.
There are around 32,000 brown bears in the United States, primarily found in Idaho, Washington, Montana, and Wyoming. Brown bears live in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, where they have caused eight fatalities since the park opened in 1872. Statistically, a person is more likely to die from a falling tree than a brown bear attack.
