A woman has described the terrifying moment she came face-to-face with a brown bear while hiking alone in the Chiemgau Alps, Germany, an area that has not had a breeding bear population in over 175 years.
The hiker, who has not been named, was walking in broad daylight when she heard an unusual noise and a panicked squawk from a crow. Turning around, she saw an adult brown bear standing upright about 200 metres away, looking directly at her.
She told Radio Charivari: "A crow squawked really loudly, and then I looked around and saw a bear standing upright about 200 metres away. And then I ran." She added that she did not stop to take a photo, driven solely by the urge to flee.
Brown bears have been making a comeback in the Alps in recent years, with breeding populations mainly in the Central Alps in Italy, near the borders with Austria and Slovenia. However, sightings in the Chiemgau Alps are rare, with no evidence of a breeding population there since at least 1835.
In 2006, a bear known as 'Bruno' roamed the Bavarian countryside for seven weeks before being shot for public safety reasons. There have been no wild bear sightings in Britain for nearly 600 years.
