Bears and humans just don’t get along in the Italian mountains anymore. After the dispute between animal rights activists and residents in Trentino is still raging over the question of what to do with the bears that have spread there and occasionally attack people, a female bear has now become the victim of human violence in central Italy in the Abruzzo National Park.
The brown bear “Amarena”, named after her alleged fondness for black cherries, had become popular in the area around San Sebastiano dei Marsi because she always peacefully strolled through the villages with her two cubs; There are nice videos on the internet about it about the little bear family that was considered harmless. On the night of Friday, the bear was found dead outside the park with gunshot wounds, as the park administration announced with great regret on Facebook; their two boys have been looked for ever since.
The police identified the shooter and took him away for questioning. He stated that the bear was walking on his property and that he felt threatened. He fired his shotgun out of fear, but didn’t want to kill the animal.
Park management was outraged that there was no reason to kill the bear. It caused damage to livestock and agriculture, but never posed a danger to humans. Her death is also a heavy loss because “Amarena” was a particularly fertile female bear, and the national park complains that the population is declining. There are still 60 bears of the rare species “Martian Baunbären” counted there, a few years ago there were still 100.
A hard line against bears is popular among the Italian population
100 bears, there with increasing tendency, there are also in Trentino, where the situation is very different. There, at the beginning of the millennium, bears were released into the wild in an EU project, which then unexpectedly multiplied and stayed in a rather small area. As a result, there are repeated encounters with people and also attacks by bears on them. The bear JJ4 “Gaia” attacked and killed the 26-year-old jogger Andrea Papi in Caldes in early April. She was later caught and is now in an emergency enclosure awaiting a decision on whether to extradite her to a reserve in Romania.
The case is highly political because the forest service and also the regional government believe that violent bears must be killed if the coexistence of wild animals and people is to be controlled. Regional President Maurizio Fugatti had ordered the bear to be shot several times, but had been prevented from doing so by the environment ministry in Rome and also by the courts. A hard line against the bears is popular among the Italian population, but animal rights activists vehemently oppose it.
The topic also made it into the first cabinet meeting after the summer break of Giorgia Meloni’s government in Rome. The deputy prime minister, Lega leader Matteo Salvini, endorsed the position of the regional administration in Trentino and called for responsibility for dealing with the bears to be shifted back to the regions; the government must now decide.
In Abruzzo, on the other hand, Fugatti’s colleague, regional president Marco Marsilio, takes a completely different approach. He called the killing of “Amarena” unjustifiable and called on “the local communities and all tourists to continue to follow all rules so that the animals can live undisturbed in this area.”