In the course of a single week, members of the Brown Bear Intervention Team of the State Nature Conservancy of the SR managed to save the lives of two bears in the territory of two Slovak national parks. In the first case, a stranded bear cub was rescued in a forest near the municipality of Ľubochňa, in the Ružomberok district. The second bear was rescued after the 17-day search. The bear was found exhausted and with a feeding roller stuck on its head near the village of Stratená, in the Rožňava district.
In the first case, the SNC SR Intervention Team was notified by the local residents about a stranded
bear cub in the vicinity of the municipality of Ľubochňa. Not far from the high voltage network poles, the inhabitants heard continuous growling and wailing of a young bear during the night. The Intervention Team members used thermovision to locate the exact place the voice was coming from and found this year’s cub wedged in a forked beech tree trunk.
Photo: The wedged bear cub. Source: SNC SR Intervention Team
Head of the SNC SR Intervention Team West Marek Veverica: “For safety reasons, we opted for a quick rescue manoeuvre. Just a few dozen meters from this place, the sound of breaking twigs could be heard, which suggested that the mother of the cub might be in the vicinity. The colleagues released the bear cub into the wild and left the site. With the aid of thermovision, we observed the bear cub leave the spot into the dense undergrowth in search of its mother. The bear cub will thus continue to be a part of the Veľká Fatra National Park fauna.”
In the second case, after a long two-week search, the SNC SR Intervention Team rescued an exhausted bear that had its head stuck in a feeding cylinder for baiting wild boars. The injured bear had been suffering for 17 days and had walked from Čierny Váh in the Low Tatras National Park to Stratená municipality in the Slovak Paradise National Park. The animal, with its head wedged in the cylinder, managed to survive the ordeal for such a long time only thanks to the fact that it has learnt how to drink water despite the obstacle.
Photo: A sedated bear, its head stuck in the feeding cylinder. Source: SNC SR Intervention Team
The SNC SR Intervention Team tracked the emaciated bear to the municipality of Stratená. After sedation, the feeding cylinder was removed from the bear’s head and the bear was treated and released back into the wild. Michal Haring, head of the SNC SR Intervention Team North, pointed out that “the plastic feeding drum is used to bait wild animals, especially wild boars. The hopper is built for approximately 30 litres of corn. Practical experience shows that such feeding drums are not protected sufficiently against other animals, but especially brown bears. Brown bears are able to overcome the locking mechanism used and they can subsequently access the food, in most cases maize. We therefore recommend modifying the locking mechanism in a way which would prevent the bears from damaging or getting through it.”
Video (click on image to view): A sad story with a happy ending. Source: SNC SR Intervention Team
Detailed information about the activities of the SNC SR Intervention Team, as well as recommendations on how to evaluate and act in the case of a bear encounter, are available on the SNC SR Brown Bear Intervention Team’s website https://zasahovytim.sopsr.sk/ or at https://www.sopsr.sk/medved. We also recommend the SNC SR’s instructional video “Behaviour in the forest”, which is freely available on the SNC SR YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhlOtrGM6uk
