A Greek hiker, who went to walk in a Forest of the Massif rodopes, in the northeast of Greece, near Bulgaria, made a deadly fall after being pushed to a ravine on a bear, AFP learned this Tuesday, June 10 from emergency services.
Transmitted to the hospital where his death was observed, Christos Stavrianidis walks with another experienced walker, Dimitris Kioroglou when the incident occurred on Monday, said the National Rescue Service EKAV to the AFP.
“Suddenly I saw a bear attack,” said the latter in the Greek Portal Portal Newsit. “My dog delayed him for a few seconds. I used a pepper spray, and he directed my friend and dropped him to the ravine,” he added.
More defensive behavior than an attack
According to Panos Stefanou, spokesman for the Arktourus fauna protection group in Greece, the bear wanted to defend his territory: “It is a more defensive behavior than an attack. The bear is trying to repel what he perceives as a threat,” he said on Greek public television.
The two hikers had the goal of walking through the vestiges of a Greek war plane that had crashed in the region in the 1950s. A discovery in the heart of this forest cob last summer that excited the two men who wanted to identify a more accessible route to the site to allow the visit.
According to the official Arktourus website, Brown Bear’s number, an internationally protected species by the Bern Convention, is estimated at 450 in Greece. They are partially located in the mountains of the rodopes.
The NGO specifies that “humans do not attack, unless they believe they or their young people are threatened.”
Source: BFM TV
