Slovenia's bears, between respect and bear watching

Where to see bears with a guide

The Tourist Board presents two experiences. Zavod Kočevsko’s, in the Kočevje forests, lasts eight and a half hours from April to October and starts at Hostel Bearlog with a presentation and the code of conduct for moving through bear territory. It continues with a picnic of forest herbs, an expedition following bear tracks, a visit to the Bear’s Den at Kočevska Reka, an early dinner and evening watching from hides with a hunter. It costs €390 per person for two, €310 for three and €270 for groups of four to eight. The other, SlovenianBears, is in the Lož Valley, in Notranjska, a photo outing from May to September with groups of no more than six and 20 hides holding two to four people each; conditions are best in the afternoon. The area is covered in Notranjska.

If you walk in bear country

gov.uk asks you to take particular care in areas where bears have been sighted, notes that walkers in mountain areas occasionally meet bears and wolves, and mentions the 2025 case in Škofljica, a municipality on Ljubljana’s south-eastern edge, where a bear attacked someone out walking their dog. I haven’t found official guidance aimed at tourists on how to behave around a bear, so I won’t give you invented rules. My own common sense, not a regulation, says stick to marked paths in those forests, leave no food or rubbish and never approach. Routes are in hiking in Slovenia. Wild camping, on top of that, is banned throughout the country, with fines of €40 to €500 according to gov.uk, which is one more reason to sleep at a campsite or a signed motorhome stop rather than out in the woods.

Where they live and how many there are

Bears live mainly in the forests of Notranjska and Kočevje, in the south. With the numbers you need to be careful, because the Tourist Board itself gives different figures on different pages. One speaks of about 560 bears in those forests, another of between 900 and 1,000 in the country, most of them in the Kočevje forests, and an older press release of between 500 and 700. What they agree on is that the population is stable and one of the largest in Europe. I wouldn’t quote an exact number; the Kočevje side is covered in Kočevje.

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