Aren't those mammals making comeback mainly in Carpathian mountains (arc from Slovakia to Romania), leading to bears openly attacking population, but almost nothing is happening in the Alps?
Was passing trough Transfagarian when a downhill bicycle race was happening. Some police officers were revving their motorbikes and throwing rocks at a bear to keep it away from the contestants. Lots of bear cubs along the way too. Everyone just keeps feeding them...
Not sure what to make of the situation. The bears didn't seem hostile and none of the locals were too scared of them.
> The bears didn't seem hostile and none of the locals were too scared of them.
There are no locals on the Transfagarasan, just tourists :)
No local in our mountain area is happy that bears come from the forest to eat from the trash cans, believe me. And I mean even in cities, not remote villages. If you ask me, we have a bear overpopulation problem now.
Interesting. There are some towns in Minnesota where the locals have really good relationships with the local (black) bears. They feed them, play with them, introduce their kids to them, post videos of them putting their hands in their mouths, etc. Basically all the things they tell you not to do. There's probably a big difference between black bears and Eurasian brown bears, but I wonder how much potential their is to achieve cohabitation through cultural change alone
Historically humans have hunted other predators because of simple competition. But nowadays, bears hunting elk is not a threat to our food source
I was born and lived most of my life in Minnesota, and got into outdoor activities pretty heavily in 2020. I’ve never heard of what you describe and it would be a terrible idea. I’ve only come across one bear in the wild and it bolted away upon noticing me. Bears that aren’t afraid of humans are pretty bad news.
The point was that we see a huge increase in Carpathians but almost none in Alps, so on average there is an EU-wide increase, which leads to dangerous (to humans) numbers in one part of EU and near-extinct levels in other parts.
Bears defend their territories and when there are too many of them, some get pushed out of forests and try to survive in human settlements, typically by picking trash and that sometimes leads to attacking people with grim consequences. The number of bear attacks in Carpathians is rising sharply lately.
