Brown bear

Bears in the eastern province of Van raise eyebrows among scientists as they defy their natural hibernation patterns due to global warming and the availability of food all year round, warns professor Dr. Lokman Aslan, the director of the Van YYU Wildlife Conservation and Rehabilitation Center.

The brown bears in Nymfaio, near Florina, in northern Greece, have entered their winter hibernation following recent colder weather and snow, as announced by Arcturos on Friday.

A mother bear and her two cubs have been shot dead near Konitsa in Greece's Epirus region. The incident was reported to Arcturos, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of the brown bear, on Sunday after the lifeless bodies were discovered alongside the road connecting the cities of Ioannina and Kozani.

Animal rights activists and environmental NGOs on Friday condemned an order allowing hundreds of bears to be killed signed by the former Environment minister of Romania, Tanczos Barna, on the last day of his mandate at the ministry.

The order allows a quota of almost 500 bears to be killed on the grounds that they pose a danger to humans.

Camera traps used in the wildlife monitoring and research studies of Bartın University have captured images of bears that could not hibernate due to the weather conditions above the seasonal norms in the northern province's Ulus district.

Slovenia has one the largest brown bear populations in Europe and it is not uncommon to spot one walking in the woods or even in settled areas. Like the wolf and the lynx, the brown bear is a protected species, but the population is managed by culling. Last year, 206 bears were culled.

Ljubljana – An environmental organisation has lost a legal battle against the Environment Ministry’s decision to allow the culling of 222 brown bears in Slovenia this year, by the end of September. The Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning said the ruling showed its decision for the culling was legally right and professional.

Škofljica – A 53-year woman sustained light injures after being attacked by a brown bear in the woods in the Pijava Gorica area, south of Ljubljana, on Saturday in what is the second such incident in a week, according to a police report.

Ljubljana – As many as 130 brown bears were culled in Slovenia this year until 11 August, of which 121 were hunted on the basis of the Environment Agency’s permits and nine were found dead, the Environment Ministry told the STA on Friday, four days after a brown bear attacked a local while he was jogging near the town of Pivka, SW.

Fines for feeding bears by individuals could be doubled or even tripled from the current level, which is somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 RON, according to a the secretary of state of the Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests (MMAP), Robert Szep. "We are working on a piece of legislation to limiting and drastically sanctioning the feeding of bears by unauthorized people near localities.