Berin who killed Italian runner may not be shot by judge | Abroad

After the fatal attack on runner Andrea Papi last week, the Trento provincial council had sentenced berin JJ4 to death. In the area where the runner was killed, traps have been set to catch the animal and dogs have been deployed to track her down. That is not an easy job: JJ4 has a GPS collar, but the GPS coverage in the area is very poor.

Animal protection organization Lega Anti Vivisezione brought summary proceedings earlier this week against the order to kill the bear. The court in Trento agreed with the animal protectors: until the hearing on May 11, no bear may be shot.

At the end of last week, runner Papi was found dead in the woods of the northern Italian province. There were bear bite marks on his body. DNA testing revealed that it was a 17-year-old female bear JJ4. The bear had already attacked two runners a month earlier, but they escaped unhurt.

In the same order, the provincial government ordered three more “problematic bears” to be killed. One of them is MJ5, the big brother of JJ4. He was responsible for an attack on a hiker in March this year. The authorities also believe that the total number of copies should be reduced to fifty. About a hundred brown bears currently live in Trentino.

The brown bear was almost extinct in Trentino at the beginning of this century. The transfer of ten bears from Slovenia in 1999 was the beginning of the reintroduction of the brown bear in northern Italy. The population has grown strongly in 25 years. The animals are taking up more and more space in northern Italy.

Their fenced-off habitat is becoming too small and the possibility of encountering a bear is growing. In recent years, the number of incidents involving brown bears has increased sharply. This year alone, four people have been attacked by a bear in Trentino, one of them fatal.