Bear debate divides Italy

What to do with surplus bears and wolves? This has been hotly debated in Italy since a man was killed by a bear earlier this month in northern Trentino killed. This had not happened in Italy in 150 years and confronted local and national administrators with the question of how to deal with the problem of the increasing number of wild animals in the Italian mountain regions.

Economic motives also play a role in that debate. The Italian Alps and Apennines are popular holiday destinations and they could be seriously affected if tourists start to feel that life is no longer certain there.

That is why, not only in the region, but also in Rome, solutions are diligently being sought that vary from shooting or deporting or trying to get residents and tourists to live together peacefully with bears and wolves.

More than 100 bears

On April 5, Andrea Papi, a 26-year-old resident of the village of Cales in the autonomous province, went Trentino in northwestern Italy, out the door for a jog. The next day he was found dead on a nearby trail and an autopsy revealed he had been killed by a bear.

In the meantime it has become clear that it concerns a 17-year-old bear, known under the code JJ4. (Almost all bears in Trentino are with the Forestal, forestry, known and coded.)

It turned out that this same animal had also seriously injured 2 walkers last year. The provincial government then issued an order to eliminate the animal, but it was subsequently annulled by the TAR, the administrative court of Trento.

The same scenario is now playing out again. The province wants to shoot JJ4 (again), but the subdistrict court has suspended the order after an organization of animal lovers, the Lega Antiviviszione, had lodged an objection, partly because the bear is currently having cubs.

That is probably also the reason for her attack on the jogger: a good advice given to walkers in areas where bears live is to stay as far away as possible from mother bears with offspring.

According to the LAV, the bear does not need to be put down, but it is sufficient to place her within a sturdy enclosure. But that does not solve the problem of the other 100 bears.

Too successful reintroduction

The looming presence of bears in Trentino is the unintended consequence of an overly successful reintroduction plan. In the Italian Alps the brown bear was a frequent sight in the past, but due to the advance of man their numbers quickly decreased and at the end of the last century there were only 3 to 5 bears in Trentino.

In 1999, 9 specimens were therefore imported from Slovenia with the intention of achieving a fixed boar population of 40-50 animals. The project was successful beyond expectations, so that Trentino is now estimated to have 90 adult bears and 20 cubs again.

However, the bears did not wander to the western Alps as expected, but remained in Trentino. There are actually too many of them there, so that the naturally shy animals are increasingly coming into contact with people in search of food.

The reintroduction of the bear, which was initially also seen as an extra tourist attraction, now that the bear is really loose, threatens to become an obstacle.

Shooting is not taboo

Thus, the president of Trentino, Maurizio Fugatti, has proposed eliminating half of the bears, which are still a protected species.

He is supported in this by Reinhold Messner. The famous South Tyrolean alpinist and conservationist argued in an interview with the newspaper The print that shooting bears and wolves should no longer be a taboo: 'How can you let bears and tourists live together in our forests? And what can we do to prevent wolf packs from slaughtering entire herds of sheep and goats? Not by shooting at random, but by means of a legal regulation to maintain the situation.'

(Messner also addresses the problem of the wolf, which was almost extinct in Italy in the 70s, but of which there are now about 2.000 again. They do indeed pose a threat to sheep herds, but are also useful as the only natural enemy of the wild boars whose numbers in Italy have increased exponentially in recent years.)

The prospect of a massive bear hunt has also sparked protests. A group of parliamentarians from different parties is calling for a massacre to be avoided at all costs. The World Wildlife Fund argues that the bears cannot be held responsible for the negligence of the local government.

And former environment minister Sergio Costa recommends taking an example from the Abruzzo National Park, where bears and humans have found a modus vivendi, including by monitoring all bears via satellite, so that citizens and tourists know where the animals are. located.

In a meeting in Rome between Fugatti and Environment Minister Gilberto Picchetti Frattin, an interim solution was suggested: the bear that killed Papi and two other 'problem bears' are killed and half of the rest are deported to Austria and Slovenia. The question is, of course, whether the neighboring countries are also happy with this.