Europe saved its predators from the brink of extinction. So why is it killing thousands of bears, wolves and lynx?

With Sweden issuing permits to kill a fifth of its bears, and Romanian MPs voting to double its quota, the debate over hunting season has become a political issue

The forest was unnaturally still when Soa Chovanova Supekova first picked up the bear's scent. It was roe deer rutting season in southern Slovakia, and the hills below the Carpathian mountains were busy with tourists biking and foraging for mushrooms. Fellow hunters who had come face to face with bears had told Supekova the fear had been so great they could not lift their rifles. Sitting with her father, a hunter in his 80s who had killed a few bears, she found herself in a similar state of dread - she was out on that trip expecting to kill deer, and did not want to come on a bear unexpectedly.

Fear permeated me ... the smell penetrated to the tip of my bones," says Supekova, the founder of the Club of Slovak Lady Hunters. But the bear never appeared. The next morning, the daughter-and-father hunting duo saw its droppings. We breathed a sigh of relief only in the car."