Today, around 4 o’clock in the morning, a brown bear specimen which has been causing damage in the Ružomberok cemetery for some time was captured by the Brown Bear Intervention Team of the State Nature Conservancy of the SR (SNC SR Intervention Team) who used a special device to catch the bear.

After the capture, the bear was put down with the assistance of a vet and its body was handed over to a Smrekovica hunting ground user. The bear was a 5-year-old male weighing approx. 100 kg. During the regular monitoring activities carried out on site, in the vicinity of the municipal cemetery, the SNC SR Intervention Team identified several synanthropic bears who were attracted to the cemetery by the mixture of pork and beef tallow added in the candle wax.

Despite the various methods used to scare the bears away – with light, sound, alarm shots or pyrotechnics – the bears were unresponsive and showed no signs of shyness when encountering humans.

The capture of these individuals and their placement in a nursery was not an option in this case, as these were specimen were accustomed to living free in the wild and their adaptation to artificially created conditions in captivity would not have been possible.