Image reproduced from Yahoo! 奇摩新聞

A tragic incident occurred in Romania involving a 49-year-old Italian tourist named Omar Farang Zin, who was killed after attempting to take a selfie with a bear cub. The incident took place in the Arges County of the Carpathian Mountains in central Romania, where Omar was touring on his motorcycle.

According to various media reports, Omar had shared videos and selfies of his close encounters with wild brown bears on social media the day before the incident. In one particular photo, he was smiling while posing with a bear cub, completely unaware of the danger that lurked nearby. On the day of the attack, while attempting to get close to the cub, the mother bear appeared and attacked him. Local police and emergency services received reports from witnesses about the bear attack. Search and rescue teams spent about an hour locating Omar’s body in the valley, which was already lifeless.

The local government of Romania confirmed that the mother bear involved in the incident had been humanely euthanized. It is estimated that there are between 10,000 and 13,000 wild brown bears in the region. Due to increased human activities and climate change, bear habitats are shrinking, leading to more frequent confrontations between bears and humans.

Omar's death marks the latest in a series of bear attack fatalities involving tourists in Romania. Last July, a 19-year-old woman was also killed by a brown bear while hiking in the Bucegi Mountains, where she was thrown over a cliff over 100 meters high. Environmental experts assert that improper waste management and a lack of preventative measures, such as electrical fences, are largely responsible for this troubling trend of bears approaching human settlements. In response to this issue, the Romanian government has doubled its annual culling quota for bears to 481, a move that has sparked controversy among conservation groups.