Slovakia has declared a state of emergency and ordered the killing of 350 brown bears after a man was mauled to death in a forest near Detva, officials confirmed. The move has sparked intense debate, with critics calling it a "hysterical reaction" by the government. Prime Minister Robert Fico’s populist-nationalist government announced after a cabinet meeting that around a quarter of the country’s estimated 1,300-strong bear population would be culled, citing a spate of attacks and growing public fear.

Defending the controversial move, he told reporters: “We can't live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods.” The emergency measures, which allow bears to be shot, have been expanded to 55 of Slovakia’s 79 districts, meaning most of the country is now covered by the order. The government in Bratislava had already loosened protections allowing bears to be killed if they stray too close to human settlements, with 93 shot by the end of 2024.

The cull follows a series of high-profile incidents, including the death of a 59-year-old man whose body was found in the woods near Detva at the weekend, with what authorities described as “devastating injuries to the head”.

Slovak police confirmed on Wednesday that his wounds were consistent with a bear attack, and a local NGO reported evidence of a bear’s den nearby. Bears have increasingly become a political issue in Slovakia amid a rise in reported encounters, including fatal attacks.

In March 2024, a 31-year-old Belarusian woman fell into a ravine and died while being chased by a bear in northern Slovakia. Several weeks later, a large brown bear was captured on video running through the centre of the nearby town of Liptovsky Mikolas in broad daylight, bounding past cars and lunging at pedestrians before authorities claimed to have hunted it down—though conservationists later disputed this, arguing that a different bear had been shot.

The mass cull has sparked fierce criticism from conservationists, who argue the decision is in violation of international obligations and could be illegal. Ecologist and opposition MEP Michal Wiezek condemned the plan as “absurd,” accusing the Environment Ministry of failing to prevent bear attacks despite last year’s unprecedented killings.

He told the BBC: “To cover up their failure, the government has decided to cull even more bears," arguing that thousands of encounters each year pass without incident and calling on the European Commission to intervene.

Environment Minister Tomas Taraba said on Wednesday that the country’s bear population was now over 1,300 and needed to be reduced to 800, as the numbers were growing too large. However, experts dispute claims of a rising population, arguing that it remains stable at around 1,270 and warning that a large-scale cull could have severe ecological consequences.

Bears are common across the Carpathian mountain range, which stretches from Romania through western Ukraine to Slovakia and Poland, but Slovakia has seen a particularly sharp rise in encounters in recent years. While the government insists the cull is necessary to protect the public, critics warn it is a politically motivated move designed to play on fears and distract from other issues.

Pavol Zilincik, a lawyer and policy manager at World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) Slovakia, told TVP World: “This is just a hysterical reaction [by the government] to the tragedy on Sunday night. The government simplifies things by thinking ‘there are too many bears so let’s kill some’. But the solution should be introducing measures that reduce bear encounters.”

The WWF argues that it had been “scientifically proven” that shooting bears fails to reduce the number of bear-human encounters.