Arcturos

Two bear cubs have been killed after being hit by a vehicle in the northwestern prefecture of Florina.

The remains of the two bears were found on Monday morning by motorists on the Florina-Kozani national road.

One-year-old orphan bears Bradley and Cooper were released into the wild on Saturday after being trained on how to make it on their own.

The 16-month old yearlings were tagged and released by the environmental group Arcturos, who run a bear sanctuary in Florina in northern Greece.

Two bears were run over and killed within the space of a few hours on Monday at the same location on the Egnatia National Highway near Siatista in Kozani, northern Greece.

One of the animals was run over by a truck, while the second, a pregnant female, was hit by a car.

Two Greek wildlife conservation groups, Arcturos and Callisto, on Friday called for a barrier to be erected on a section of the Egnatia Highway near Kozani in northern Greece after a bear was killed in a road accident on Thursday, the fifth such incident this year.

A veterinarian is due to determine whether a brown bear - a protected species - found dead on the outskirts of Florina in northern Greece on Tuesday was poisoned or died of other causes.

Arcturos, a Florina-based bear conservation group, said it found the animal dead a day after alerting authorities in Florina that a bear had been spotted near the town.

Greek bear conservation group Arcturos has launched a public appeal to gather funds to help treat a brown bear cub that was injured in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) last month. Ushko, the 5-month old male cub, in question is being treated at Arcturos’s Forina sanctuary in Northern Greece. The cub has a broken pelvis as it was possibly hit by a car.