Madrid
Italy suspended this Friday (26) the slaughter of the bear JJ4, which killed mountaineer Andrea Papi in early April and has caused an uproar in recent weeks after dozens of institutions and citizens called for the animal’s release.
The matter will be reexamined on December 14, but the Trento Regional Administrative Court has scheduled a monthlong hearing on June 27 to propose alternative proposals. The most important of these is the transfer of the 17yearold bear weighing 150 kg to a wildlife sanctuary in Germany, Romania or Jordan.
This has already happened to bears in the province of Trentino, with deliveries of DJ3s to a German reserve and M57s to Hungary. This Friday’s decision also affects another woman in the area, MJ5, aged 18, who attacked a man in early March but has not yet been captured.
“We are very satisfied with the result achieved. Gaia [nome que se deu recentemente a JJ4] is currently safe and we strongly believe it will continue to be safe,” attorneys Rosaria Loprete and Giada Bernardi said in a joint statement.
“And like them, other bears will continue to walk the path so that animals are no longer the scapegoats for oversights and/or human error,” added the two, representing NGOs Liga Leal Antiviviseccionista and Associação Patas que Dão a Mão.
For the judges, the dangerousness of the animal was not proven by documents presented by the Province of Trentino. Its governor, Maurizio Fugatti, was the leader of the movement to kill the bear. Since JJ4’s capture on April 18, a hundred associations have publicly spoken out against the victim, and even the dead climber’s parents have declared that they are on the bear’s side.
“I am against the sacrifice but they must put their hand on their conscience because if this happened to one of their children I don’t know what they would do. I just want justice for my son,” Franca Ghirardini said last month about the Trentino authorities as to who was to blame. Carlo Papi, Andrea’s father, said there were no warning signs about the dangers in the area.
“I am convinced that the death was not an accident. The responsibility rests with the bear program and the provincial and local governments that have managed it over time,” he said Sheet Marcello Notarianni, Advisor to the United Nations International Union for Conservation of Nature.
He refers to the European Union’s Life Ursus program, which brought ten animals from Slovenia between 1999 and 2002 to reintroduce them in the Italian Alps, as the bear population in Trentino was almost extinct due to at least a year of indiscriminate hunting.
“But bear management in Trentino got out of hand,” explains Notarianni, a sustainable tourism expert with experience working with wildlife like tigers and elephants in Asia.
“The program called for the reintroduction of about 50 individuals, but currently the official figure is at least 100, while others say 200. In addition, control with radio collars, more effective communication and the continuous use of signs warning of the presence of bears and educating the population about the humanbear relationship is required, since the residents of the region have not lived with these animals for decades”, he added.
According to the specialist, it is necessary to convey to the population the protocol for entering a forest with these animals, such as the use of a bell that attaches to the ankles and a stick that hits the ground with each step in order to to warn the bear of your presence.
“If you find one of them in the bush, you must not run away, otherwise the bear will chase it. The person must maintain eye contact with the bear and walk backwards very slowly without showing any sign of aggression,” he taught Notarianni.
Since his capture on April 20, JJ4 has been in a cage at the Casteller center in Trento. The bear was with three twoyearold cubs, but they were left behind after they were deemed selfsufficient by the area’s forest service.
JJ4 is the daughter of Jurka and José, two of ten animals imported from Slovenia. The attack on Papi was the eighth recorded in the province since 2009, but it is the first death since Life Ursus was deployed.