Preventive measures
Map of reported brown bear sightings in 2025
How to reduce the risk of encountering a bear
Prevention is an operational activity in which members of the Bear Response Team carry out preventive measures and install technical equipment to prevent damage to property caused by large carnivores and to avert immediate threats to the health or lives of local residents. For these purposes, devices such as electric fencing and acoustic and light deterrents are used.
🛡️ Proven preventive measures include
1. Measures in public spaces and within the municipality 🏘️
- Secure waste in villages using lockable containers;
- Mark high-risk locations with information and warning signs, and respect them;
- Regularly remove self-seeded trees and dense vegetation;
- Improve street lighting on the outskirts of the village and along access roads;
- Monitor high-risk locations using camera traps or camera surveillance;
- Use acoustic and light deterrents at selected locations;
- Inform local residents about the situation.
2. Measures on private property and farms 🌾
- Use livestock guardian dogs to protect your farm;
- Protect beehives and property with electric fencing (in accordance with Decree No. 170/2021 Coll. of the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic);
- Mow your land regularly and harvest your crops;
- Use scent-based repellents;
- Do not feed or bait wild animals near built-up areas.
3. Monitoring, reporting, and cooperation 🚨
- Report baiting sites to the relevant Bear Intervention Team.
- Cooperate with relevant hunting organizations.
- Communicate with municipal representatives, residents, and experts.
Photo gallery 👀
🏡 Individual responsibility of property owners (homes and cottages)
Your property should not attract bears. Manage your yard and garden in a way that makes them neither attractive nor easily accessible to brown bears.
What you can do:
- Store waste in suitable, securely closed containers.
- Do not leave food scraps in the yard, garden, or nearby forest.
- Keep compost securely covered or enclosed.
- Collect fallen fruit promptly.
- Store animal feed in sealed containers or indoors.
- Keep livestock and other animals securely enclosed at night.
- Remove dead animals promptly.
👥 Why preventive measures matter
- They reduce the risk of human-bear encounters. Bears naturally search for food. If they cannot find it near villages, farmyards, hiking trails and similar places, they have no reason to come close to people.
- They prevent changes in bear behavior. If a bear becomes accustomed to easily available food sources – waste, compost, animal feed, fruit and so on – it loses its natural wariness. Such an individual is more likely to return to settlements and poses an increased risk. Prevention helps to maintain the natural behavior of brown bears.
- They increase public confidence. When people are well informed, they react more calmly and more responsibly.
- They prevent damage and financial losses, and protect property. Fewer damaged beehives, fewer destroyed electric fences and less damage to livestock mean fewer call-outs for the Bear Response Teams.
- They protect the bear itself. Any conflict may lead to intervention against the animal. Preventive measures reduce the need to intervene in the brown bear population, thereby protecting the bear.
- They help protect human lives.