Italian authorities on Tuesday introduced that they’d captured a brown bear in a single day after it had killed a jogger earlier this month.
The destiny of the 17-year-old feminine bear, often called JJ4, is now in the arms of an Italian court docket, which is able to decide if it must be euthanized. The debate has infected tensions over a profitable effort to reintroduce brown bears to the area after they practically went extinct in the 1990s.
The bear was discovered in Val Meledrio, a valley in the mountains of Northern Italy, the provincial authorities of Trento mentioned in a news release on Tuesday.
The president of Trento Province, Maurizio Fugatti, mentioned “satisfaction mixes with bitterness” over the seize.
Mr. Fugatti also attempted to have JJ4 euthanized in 2020, after the bear attacked a father and his grownup son in June of that yr.
“We would have liked to give this news in 2020, but its killing first, and then its capture, had been blocked by the courts,” he mentioned.
Authorities looked for the bear after investigators used genetic testing to find out that JJ4 had fatally attacked Andrea Papi, 26, a jogger from Caldes, a city in Trento. Mr. Papi was discovered in the woods and an autopsy concluded that he had died from wounds inflicted by a bear on April 5 or 6. Mr. Papi was the primary Italian to be killed by a bear in fashionable instances, reported the Italian news agency, ANSA.
After genetic testing confirmed that JJ4 had attacked Mr. Papi, Mr. Fugatti signed an order final week to seize her. He has additionally issued an order for the bear to be euthanized, however that directive is on maintain, pending a choice by a neighborhood court docket, which is scheduled to satisfy on May 11.
Mr. Fugatti said after Mr. Papi’s dying that different authorities in Italy had targeted an excessive amount of on the well-being of the bears, and never sufficient on the protection of individuals residing in the identical areas.
He can be looking for to euthanize the bear MJ5, which attacked a person in March.
There had been an estimated 73 to 92 bears in Trento in 2021, the government said. The brown bear inhabitants in the area had shrunk to a few or 4 bears in the 1990s and confronted extinction earlier than the challenge, Life Ursus, introduced 10 bears from Slovenia to the area between 1999 and 2002.
Animal welfare teams have pushed again towards his efforts. On Monday, the advocacy group Animalisti Italiani mentioned that the provincial authorities had not finished sufficient to attenuate the probabilities of harmful interactions between bears and people.
“Our cohabitation with the big predators that have always populated our country is not only possible, with the right precautions, but also necessary,” the group said in a statement.
Trento’s forest division captured JJ4 this week utilizing a tube entice and took her to a neighborhood wildlife heart. She was discovered along with her three two-year-old bears, which had been deemed self-sufficient and had been left behind, officers mentioned.
At the wildlife heart, JJ4 is being fed fruit and greens, officials said. She weighs about 330 kilos and is in good well being.
Ilaria Parogni contributed reporting.
