Posted on 07/23/2025 5:37:03 AM PDT by marktwain
Romania has the highest brown (grizzly) bear population in the European Union, and the highest number of fatal bear attacks. Russia has many more bears, including more in the European part of Russia, but most Russian bears are in Asia.
A study using DNA, which started in 2022 and finished in 2025, is the most accurate measurement of Romanian brown bears. The study shows a brown bear population of between 10,419 and 12,770 in Romania, about twice the previously thought number.
In 2021, estimates of the brown (grizzly) bear population ranged from 2,000 to 10,000. From rferl.org in 2021:
The official number of brown bears in Romania is over 6,000. But the government is not actually sure of the number, and environmental groups argue that it might be as low as 2,000. Hunting associations say the number could be as high as 10,000.
The study was conducted, in part, because of the increasing number of brown bear attacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Frankly... Kind of surprised that there are any bears left in Europe. The UK killed off all of it’s wildlife centuries ago.
I son just left Romania last week. I am glad he never saw a bear. 🐻
Romanians need to start stocking up on big bore revolvers and leverguns and 12 gauges. It’s the only way!
The rewilding movement is very strong in Europe.
There has been a huge push to bring bears and wolves back.
Human stupidity plays a role as well in bear attacks.
Early this month, an Italian man visiting Romania thought it would be a good idea to stop and take a selfie with a bear. It didn’t go well.
That’s a lotta bears.
Yep. If you hunt bears, they will figure it out. Less bear attacks.
My goodness, that's an overstatement to put it mildly. It's true that many of the larger mammals went a long time ago - the largest mammal today is the red deer - but many other forms of wildlife thrive, despite the constant pressures of urban and agricultural development.
A lot of this is down to the popularity and success of the country's various wildlife organisations. Birds, for example - Britain has a greater range of bird species, resident and migratory, than any other European country. Thanks partly to statutory protections but also in large measure to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - one of the country's largest charities - there have been successful reintroductions of many threatened or wiped out species - red kite, osprey, white-tgailed eagle, great bustard, Cornish chough etc...And in smaller mammals, beavers and pine marten are now back in southern England, and there's a serious probability of lynx and even wolf being reintroduced to help control overstocking of deer in the Scottish Highlands.
Sometimes the concern for wildlife can become a little unbalanced - the high-speed rail line being built between London and Birmingham was forced to spend over £100 million on a tunnel to protect a rare species of bat.
‘reintroduced’... Meaning they are not natural. Bears, wolves and all the other large animals that compete with humans for food were destroyed centuries ago.
Hmmm…hadn‘t wolves become nearly extinct in England by the end of the 15th century, because they had been a serious threat to sheep, bearers of the precious wool, England‘s most important factor in the national economy?
The last wolf in the British Isles, or so I have heard, was shot in 1680 by a Scottish huntsman. Since then, there have been none in the wild, although reintroducing them to the Scottish highlands is being debated at the time.
Beautiful as they are, they still pose considerable danger to livestock and people, some biologists say…
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