Motorcyclist killed in bear attack on Romanian scenic mountain road

A motorcyclist was mauled to death by a bear on a road in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania on Thursday, emergency service officials said, the latest attack in the country with the European Union's largest population of brown bears.

Romania has a brown bear population of 10,000 to 13,000, preliminary results of a multi-year DNA study showed this year, and authorities are struggling to keep residents and tourists in mountain towns safe.

Police and emergency services said in a joint statement that tourists had alerted them to Thursday's attack on the Transfagarasan road in the central county of Arges. The bear had dragged the motorcyclist down a ravine, they said.

There were no details about the motorcyclist's identity.

Almost 30 people have been killed by bears in Romania over the last two decades, the environment ministry has said. Sightings of bears are common and local media regularly report bear attacks on people and livestock.

Last year, Romania's parliament doubled the annual bear kill quota to 481 bear kills per year to control the size of the bear population and to remove animals that have become accustomed to entering cities in search of food.

Wildlife experts have said bear attacks have increased because of human behaviour as the shrinking of the animals' habitats due to construction, logging and climate change.

Many bears are also attracted by rubbish dumps on the outskirts of cities and by discarded food. Officials have not done enough to step up prevention measures, including electric fences and better trash management, wildlife experts said.