TIME TO TAKE THE SLOVAK TRIP... BEAR FACTS OF LIFE

Bears in Slovakia are finally expected to survive long-term - but 10 years ago there were very few, 71 a year were earmarked for death and we were scared of them

FROM THE ARCHIVES

2010: It’s a grizzly fact but there are dangerous bears in them there hills. And if one turned up looking for food, you can rest assured it wouldn’t be any teddy bear’s picnic.

Brown bears, like wolves, are almost never hungry for human flesh - but a simple case of  have-and-have-not could change this basic law of nature.

A human being, of course, invariably has food - and a bear invariably has not.

Bears are intelligent animals and learned centuries ago that it made sense to forage tourist trails rather than waste time foraging in the forest. Now they clean up garbage quicker than you can say ‘trouble bruin’.

In simple terms, we have started to domesticate the great European brown bear … they now see us as rural meal tickets.

And that’s a dangerous thing for us. And for them. The Slovak Ministry of the Environment agreed years ago that hunters could kill 71 bears. That was eight more than the previous year. At least another ten were gunned down illegally.

Although there is not one documented account of a bear killing a human being in Slovakia for a hundred years, ten people were injured by them last year.

So, it’s a fact that the bears are getting braver. Yet you could walk the Tatras for a month without seeing one. Keep an eye open for the signs though - chewed tree bark, snapped branches, scooped out ant hills, smashed bee hives.

If you do bump into one, there are some basic rules for survival: Put down your rucksack, don’t look it in the eye, don’t shout and, above all, don‘t flee - it will run you down in seconds.

 And if it strikes at you, play dead.  Truth is the bear is as scared as you are. All it wants is  your rucksack and to make its getaway into the woods.