By Keith Weir
Rome: Authorities in the northern Italian Alps, an area that uses an image of a bear to promote itself to visitors, have killed a mother bear they deemed to be dangerous after it injured a French tourist earlier this month.
The action by the local forest corps who shot the bear, known as KJ1, has sparked protests from animal rights groups and criticism from a government minister. KJ1 was traced and killed via its radio collar – used for tracking and monitoring wild animals – on the orders of Maurizio Fugatti, head of the provincial authority in Trento.
A brown bear in Italy.Credit: Abruzzo Tourism
“KJ1 was a dangerous specimen,” the local authority said, adding that the bear had come into contact with people seven times, including the incident in which a French jogger was hurt.
The alpine province of Trento, which enjoys a large degree of autonomy from the Italian government, has been at the centre of controversy over the culling of brown bears that it says have encroached too confidently in human territory in recent years.
A DNA analysis taken after the French hiker was attacked indicated that KJ1 was responsible.
The hiker reportedly strayed off the path about 500 metres up on an early morning hike and encountered the bear that injured him in the leg and arm. The man escaped and called for help.
Italy’s environment minister joined animal rights groups in condemning the action.
“The killing of individual bears is not the solution to the problem,” minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said in a statement, adding that he had told Fugatti his view.
Fratin said Italy was paying the price for marketing the region using the bear’s image, and sterilisation was one way to address the issue.
The International Organisation for Animal Protection said the bear was about 22 years old and had three cubs that would struggle to survive on their own.
“Animals are sentient beings to be respected and looked after, and not objects to be removed,” the organisation said in a statement, accusing Fugatti of pursuing an “anti-bear” strategy.
It was the ninth incidence of aggression against humans since brown bears were reintroduced to the province in 1999 as part of a European Union project and the first since a hiker was killed last summer.
Earlier this year, Trento authorities said another mother bear, which had killed a jogger in 2023, would be relocated to a sanctuary in Germany after culling orders for the bear were blocked by legal challenges from environmentalists.
Reuters, AP
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