Bear Spotted Wandering Przemyśl City Centre at Night

The news in Polish

1. spacerować
   poruszać się pieszo, chodzić swobodnie bez celu ↩︎
2. nagrać
   utrwalić dźwięk lub obraz za pomocą urządzenia elektronicznego ↩︎
3. burmistrz  (m.)
   osoba stojąca na czele władz miasta ↩︎
4. spokojny
   niewykazujący niepokoju, opanowany, bez strachu ↩︎
5. zaatakować
   napaść na kogoś, skrzywdzić kogoś fizycznie ↩︎
6. spotkanie  (n.)
   sytuacja, w której dwie lub więcej osób lub istot znalazło się w tym samym miejscu ↩︎

Translation

Text comprehension

Question 1: What did the mayor ask residents to do?

Question 2: How did the bear leave the city?

Vocabulary

Polish	English
spacerować	to stroll
nagrać	to record
burmistrz  (m.)	mayor
spokojny	calm
zaatakować	to attack
spotkanie  (n.)	encounter

Read the full story

A brown bear was filmed roaming the streets of Przemyśl’s old town late at night, in scenes that quickly spread across social media. The animal was spotted after 10pm, wandering through the city centre of this town in south-eastern Poland.

The mayor of Przemyśl, Wojciech Bakun, was among those who published footage of the bear online. He urged residents to remain calm and to contact the Municipal Guard immediately if they encountered the animal. Some videos showed people approaching the bear closely, prompting warnings that provoking a wild predator was dangerous and that anyone encountering it should retreat to a safe place.

Police officers monitored the bear throughout the incident. According to Junior Corporal Karolina Kowalik of the Przemyśl City Police, officers tracked the animal’s movements the entire time. The bear eventually made its own way back towards the forest, and no direct measures were needed to remove it. No one was attacked.

The incident comes amid a rise in human–bear encounters in the region. In a separate and tragic case in Sanok County, a bear fatally attacked a 58-year-old woman. In response to the growing number of incidents, the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Rzeszów has launched a bear monitoring programme worth over 16 million złoty, planned to run until the end of 2029. So far, eight bears have been captured in the Solina and Baligród communes, and seven have been fitted with GPS collars. The programme also includes installing bear-resistant bins and planting fruit trees deeper in forests to encourage bears to stay away from human settlements.

In mid-May, the Polish parliament passed an amendment allowing hunters to deter bears and bison using smooth-bore firearms loaded with non-lethal rubber ammunition. The new law also removes criminal liability if an animal is accidentally injured or killed in defence of people.