This archive report was first published on 19 November 2019.
Published on November 19, 2019, a local newspaper in Poland broke the story of a plan to move a New Year's Eve party from Zakopane's town centre to the nearby slopes in Tatra National Park.
More than 27,000 people had signed a petition organised by the local newspaper by Tuesday, with hundreds of protesters walking across the city of Zakopane with a fake bear on a stretcher on Saturday.
The protesters called on the mayor to stop the relocation process, which was confirmed by the mayor days earlier.
TVP public television station, which organises the show, defended the move, criticising what it called "pseudo-ecologists" and arguing that sports events had been held in the area in the past without any problems.
However, the park authorities cited concerns for the area's Carpathian brown bears, stating that the "noise and flashes made by fireworks and firecrackers trigger anxiety in animals, as well as a search for new spots and in the longterm a drop in the birth rate".
According to the park, a bear had died last year after being woken up on New Year's Eve, and an expert from the park confirmed that there were Carpathian brown bears in the area, though precise numbers were not known.
