Wild bear assaults vacationer after smashing automobile window and attempting to pull him out
A tourist was filmed being mauled by a wild bear through his car window after stopping on Romania’s Transfăgărășan ‘bear pass’ and throwing food to a mother bear with a cub
A video grab of the moment a wild bear attacks a tourist in his car(Image: JamPress)
A wild bear was filmed attacking a tourist in his car. The holidaymaker stopped on the mountain road and reportedly tossed food scraps to the mother bear, accompanied by at least one cub.
But the adult bear reacted angrily, launching a ferocious attack on the Bulgarian tourist sitting inside his car. The animal reportedly smashed a window and tried to drag the tourist, named Georgi Bizhev, out of his vehicle.
Georgia, 46, who comes from the Bulgarian town of from Gorna Oryahovitsa, suffered serious bite wounds to his left arm. He said the bear clawed and bit him as he raised his arm to shield his face and neck. A seatbelt helped save him from worse injury as other drivers honked and shouted to scare the aggressive animal away.
He later said: “I saw the bear’s ears prick up and it jumped at me. It tried to grab me and pull me out of the car.”
The attack took place on a main road near the Vidraru Dam in central Romania on May 27. Romanian emergency services responded after Georgi alerted guards at the dam.
Officials stressed that the mother bear was likely protecting her cub. The stretch of road is a famous ‘bear pass’ where tourists frequently stop to observe and feed wildlife.
Georgi, a sports official and former football club president, said such encounters are commonplace on the route, with food sold at stops, although he acknowledged feeding bears is inappropriate. He admitted: “I entered its environment, it was a mistake for which I paid.”
He has since returned to Bulgaria for further treatment. No harm came to the bear or her cub.
Feeding wild bears carries heavy fines of between £1,645 and £4,935 (RON 10,000 and 30,000) in Romania. The local authorities urged tourists against approaching or feeding bears, which are protected but increasingly habituated to humans in the Carpathians.
Russia has by far the largest number of brown bears in Europe, with its European territory alone thought to be home to around 65,000 animals. Outside Russia, Romania is widely regarded as the continent’s brown bear stronghold, with estimates commonly put at between 6,000 and 13,000 bears living across the Carpathian Mountains.
Conservationists say Europe’s overall brown bear population has been recovering for decades, driven by legal protection, reforestation and changes in land use. Excluding Russia, the total number of brown bears across Europe is estimated at more than 20,500, though the animals remain unevenly spread and local populations can fluctuate due to hunting quotas, habitat pressure and conflict with humans.
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