Agriculture ministry holds workshop on bear numbers

European and national legislation offers several options for managing the number of large game such as the brown bear, Agriculture Minister Samuel Vlcan said on Monday as part of an information workshop held by his ministry. The environment ministry has been tasked with determining the "healthy number of bears" in Slovakia, he said. According to him, the first option is a special intervention team, then there's the possibility of culling bears by the State Nature Protection agency. "The third option is a regulated culling in cooperation with hunting associations, based on a request submitted to the Environment Ministry," he said.