The mayor of Nowy Sącz, a city of 83,000 people in southern Poland, has appealed to residents to stay indoors amid sightings of a bear wandering through the streets this morning. Municipal police patrols have been deployed to search for the animal.
“I was driving to work and at around 7 a.m. I saw a bear in front of my car,” one eyewitness told local news service Sądeczanin. “You could tell that he was still young, he was standing in the middle of the road…By the time I took my phone out of my bag, the bear had already gone into the bushes.”
However, some residents were able to capture the animal on camera before it disappeared. Ludomir Handzel, the mayor of Nowy Sącz, posted one such image (seen above) to social media alongside a warning to locals.
“I would ask people, especially residents of the Chruślice neighbourhood, who do not have to leave their homes, to stay at home until the situation is resolved,” Handzel wrote. “The situation is serious, we are implementing the appropriate procedures, I ask residents to be careful.”
The head of the city’s municipal police (straż miejska) confirmed to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that they are patrolling the area for the creature and that the local forest service and the Polish Hunting Association have been notified of the situation. A crisis team has also been set up and various plans of action have been established.
“The bear can be a threat to both residents and vehicles,” he told PAP. “If it appears again in a residential area, various scenarios are taken into consideration: scare it away or tranquilise it and transport it deep within the forest.”
However, the bear has not been seen since early this morning and some experts believe that it has already left the area.
“It is probably a bear that was chased away by a dominant male from territories in Slovakia,” Stanisław Michalik, head of the forest inspectorate for the nearby Piwniczna-Zdrój forest, told Sądeczanin. Nowy Sącz is located near the Tatra Mountains, which straddle the border with Slovakia.
“It may have also been chased out of the forests by wolves or some large, aggressive dogs, and strayed between buildings,” he added. “All the signs suggest that it is wandering from south to north in search of a suitable place.”
“It is looking for large woodland areas where it will be able to hunt some deer or stag…and it is very unlikely that it will stay in this area, near Nowy Sącz. I am sure that by this time [around 10 a.m.] it is already far from the Chruślice neighbourhood.”
The mountain resort town of Zakopane has installed new rubbish bins designed to prevent wild animals, including bears, from foraging for food in them.
The initiative, a collaboration with Tatra National Park, is intended to protect both animals and humans https://t.co/7PW0SatYxg
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 1, 2022
Main image credit: Prezydent Ludomir Handzel/Facebook
Anna Hackett is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a recent graduate of European Studies from Trinity College Dublin and has had previous journalistic experience with the Irish Independent News & Media group.
