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A brown bear and her cub play on the road in the outskirts of Sinaia, 140 km north of Bucharest, June 15, 2009 \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
The Slovak government has decided to allow the consumption of brown bear meat, angering environmentalists who on Wednesday slammed the move as absurd and giving a boost to poachers.<\/p>\n
Slovakia\u2019s nationalist government last month approved the culling of 350 bears, citing danger posed to people and a steady increase in bear population.<\/p>\n
Filip Kuffa, a state secretary at the environment ministry, said on Facebook this week the state would offer culled animals for resale “because bear meat is edible”.<\/p>\n
Brown bears are protected in Europe, but there are exemptions on shooting and several countries including Slovenia also allow bear meat consumption.<\/p>\n
Kuffa said bear meat must have a certificate before it hits the market, proving that the animal was hunted in compliance with an exemption from protection.<\/p>\n
Environmentalist Marian Hletko told AFP on Wednesday the decision was “absurd” as the meat will be offered by the environment ministry\u2019s organisations.<\/p>\n
“The organisations designed to protect nature will turn into state-run butcheries offering the meat of protected animals,” said Hletko, from the We Are Forest initiative.<\/p>\n
He added it would also boost poaching as “when the state signals it is not interested in protecting bears, poachers will be less worried about potential sanctions”.<\/p>\n
The government declared a state of emergency in most Slovak districts in April over “undesirable” bear presence, following deadly attacks.<\/p>\n
“We can\u2019t live in a country where people are afraid to go to the woods,” said Prime Minister Robert Fico.<\/p>\n
The Slovak parliament already eased the rules for bear culling in May 2024, allowing exemptions in several districts.<\/p>\n
But the country must follow an EU directive that allows culling only of problem bears damaging property or attacking people, and only if there is no other solution.<\/p>\n
Hletko said that a record-high 92 bears were shot in the EU member country of 5.4 million people in 2024, while another 52 died in car accidents or were killed by poachers.<\/p>\n
Environment Minister Tomas Taraba recently said the Slovak bear population exceeded 1,300 animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brown bear and her cub play on the road in the outskirts of Sinaia, 140 km north…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[61339,29290,61340,28609,254,61341,70,2558,6093,16,15,9987,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-141769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-allows","9":"tag-bears","10":"tag-culled","11":"tag-end","12":"tag-on","13":"tag-plates","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-slovakia","16":"tag-to","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-up","20":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114591938960838319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}