The brown bear has walked several hours in the morning through central Sibiu before being shot, local authorities said. The bear, which weighed about 160 kilos, was spotted outside the town hall and on the market square of this city designated European Capital of Culture in 2007. / AFP PHOTO / SILVANA ARMAT
BUCHAREST, Romania (AFP) — A brown bear was shot dead in Romania on Wednesday after entering from an adjacent forest and ambling over the roofs of a Transylvanian town, authorities said.
“Two employees from the zoo tried to tranquilise it but this didn’t work,” said Luciana Lazar, a spokeswoman for police in Sibiu in central Romania.
“So unfortunately the bear had to be killed because it became aggressive and people’s lives were in danger,” Lazar told AFP.
The bear, a six-year-old male weighing 160 kilos (350 pounds), wandered around the town of Sibiu, which is home to more than 140,000 people, for several hours early on Wednesday.
It was seen outside the town hall and in the central square before climbing into the attic of a house and then nimbly walking over several roofs.
It ended up in the courtyard of a furniture factory where zoo employees tried to put it to sleep. Police then called a professional hunter who shot the animal dead.
Romania’s vast areas of virgin forest are home to around 6,000 brown bears, some 60 percent of Europe’s population, and the animals on occasion enter towns and villages looking for food.
Last week an outcry forced the environment ministry to retract quotas allowing hunters to kill 552 bears, 657 wolves and 482 lynxes this year.
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