Romanian lawmakers more than double allowed bear kills to prevent attacks

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian lawmakers more than doubled the annual number of legal bear kills on Monday to control the population and avoid further attacks against people.

The emergency parliamentary session followed the death last week of a 19-year-old hiker who was attacked by a bear on a popular trail in the Carpathian mountains in central Romania.

The European Union state has annual quotas to proactively control the size of the bear population and to remove animals that have become accustomed to entering cities in search of food.

In 2023, the quotas amounted to 220 annual bear kills. On Monday, lawmakers increased the number to 481 per year.

Romania has Europe's largest population of brown bears outside Russia. The environment ministry estimates their number at up to 8,000, but the results of an EU-funded, DNA-based study have yet to be presented.

With hundreds of bear sightings each year, authorities are struggling to keep residents and tourists in mountain towns safe from the wild animals. Local media regularly report bear attacks on people and livestock.

The environment minister said in March that 26 people have been killed by bears in the last 20 years. Bears approaching cars on mountain roads seeking food or scavenging through trash cans are common occurrences.  

Wildlife experts say the animals, dubbed "trash-bin bears", will continue to scavenge in cities as urban sprawl eats into their habitat, climate change limits their food sources and as people feed them.

"Unfortunately, nobody knows the exact population of bears in Romania nor how many specimens the habitat can take," said Foundation Conservation Carpathia, a private conservation group.

"The number of problem bears and the damages they cause fluctuates yearly and is not directly proportional to the rise in bear density."

It added solutions must include prevention, including electric fences, better trash management and education of tourists and residents.

(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; editing by Rod Nickel)