73-year-old man was attacked as he was hunting wild boar with his dog in the Aran region of the Pyrenees mountains on Thursday morning, Spanish media said.
The Bear passed within two metres (six feet) of him. He tried to scare it off, but was attacked instead, and finally escaped by firing his rifle into the air, the newspaper El Pais said.He needed stitches in his leg and arm, and was discharged from hospital.Cattle and sheep farmers in the Pyrenees, which straddle the Spanish-French border, resent the presence of the bears.In 2004, hunters on the French side of the border shot dead a 15-year-old female bear, sparking outrage from environmentalists.Local authorities Friday launched a search for the animal involved in the attack, which they believe is a bear known as Hvala and which was brought from Slovenia in 2006.There are believed to be around 20 brown bears surviving in the Pyrenees mountains, eight of which are in the Aran region.One regional official, Francesc Boya, demanded that the bears be captured and withdrawn."Aran and the Pyrenees are not the African savanna, they are populated regions where contact between people and the environment is very direct," he told the regional parliament in Aran.
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