A bear in the Carpathians killed a tourist who approached a cub to take a selfie with it.
On Thursday, July 4, a 49-year-old tourist from Italy, Omar Farang Zin, died in the Romanian Carpathians. He tried to take a selfie with a bear cub and was fatally wounded by the mother bear, who was probably protecting her cub. The incident occurred in Arges County, in south-central Romania.
This was reported by the publication Digi24.
A man on a motorcycle trip stopped near a warning sign that forbids approaching bears and feeding them. Despite this, Zin approached the cub. At that moment, a female bear appeared and attacked him.
According to the head of the local rescue service, Ion Sanduloi, the animal pulled the man into a ravine more than 88 meters deep. He was wearing protective equipment, including a helmet, but the injuries he sustained were incompatible with life. Rescuers arrived at the scene after reports from other tourists, but it was too late.
The day before the incident, Zin posted a video on social media showing a bear near the road. He can be heard exclaiming, “There's a bear! How beautiful. He's coming towards me!”
After the tourist's body was found, Romanian authorities tracked down a female bear that may have been involved in the attack and euthanized her. This has sparked a public debate about how to manage the bear population in Romania, where the environment ministry estimates there are between 10,000 and 13,000 brown bears.
According to official statistics, bears have killed almost 30 people in Romania over the past 20 years. Last year, a 19-year-old tourist died after a bear attacked her and threw her off a cliff while hiking in the Bucegi Mountains.
This then led to a doubling of the annual bear shooting quotas to 481 individuals.
The tourist's death has drawn criticism from the public: some users accuse the deceased of neglecting basic safety rules. Others point to the sad fate of the animal, which was simply protecting its cub.
Let us recall that in Lithuania the government allowed the shooting of a young female bear that had been wandering around the outskirts of Vilnius for two days. She did not show any aggression, and her appearance was actively filmed by city residents. This was the first time in years that a brown bear had come so close to the capital. After the announced permission to shoot, the Lithuanian Association of Hunters and Fishermen refused to carry it out, stating that the animal was healthy and did not pose a threat.
And in Japan, a bear caused a transport collapse when it ran onto the runway of a regional airport in the city of Akayama. The animal roamed freely around the airport for several hours, forcing the airport administration to temporarily suspend all flights. As a result of the incident, 10 flights were cancelled and four more were delayed.
