Children near Zlín Region playground spot bear with cubs, but expert has doubts

In Lhotsko, a village in the Zlín Region of Czechia, twelve to fourteen primary school pupils reported seeing a mother bear with two cubs near a playground, at a distance of about thirty metres. The village mayor reported the incident to the police.

"The kids were running around on the playground and spotted one large animal and two smaller ones behind it. At first they thought they were cows, but then they agreed it must be bears. One third-grader already knows how to tell a bear apart from other animals. The children immediately ran home and told their parents everything," the mayor explained.

He himself arrived at the scene about half an hour later but found no clear tracks. According to him, the ground in the area has become badly dried out after the prolonged heat, and motorcyclists had already driven through the area, which could have wiped out any tracks or scared the animals off.

"I'd put the odds that the bears were really there at fifty-fifty, but I don't want to ignore it. Perhaps the mother bear is looking for fruit in the orchards and stocking up for winter. A bear was already spotted in the area a year and a half ago, so I preferred to notify the police to avoid any accidents," the mayor added. According to his description, the area around the playground consists of a meadow followed by a small grove, then a stream, with cows grazing a few hundred metres further on.

Expert remains sceptical

Michal Bojda, a predator specialist in the Beskids region with the Duha (Rainbow) movement, treats the theory of a bear family in the Zlín Region with caution.

"A mother bear with cubs turning up specifically in the Lhotsko area would be highly unusual. If we were talking about a lone bear, that would make far more sense — several individual bears really have passed through this area in recent years," Bojda noted.

At the same time, he confirmed that a mother bear with cubs does indeed live in the neighbouring Javorníky mountains, though on their Slovak side. "However, those are already grown cubs that she gave birth to in spring last year. It's unlikely she would have travelled with them so far from the Javorníky range," the expert observed. The straight-line distance from Lhotsko to that mountain range is about twenty kilometres.

If predators really are present in the Lhotsko area, Bojda believes it's only a matter of days before local hunters' trail cameras catch them on film.

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Source: novinky.cz