Italian rewilding row as bear attacks officer
Nick Squires
A PROJECT to reintroduce brown bears to Italy is under intense scrutiny after a male bear attacked an off-duty police officer who was walking in the Dolomites at the weekend.
Experts said it was the first time a male bear had attacked a human in the area – previous attacks were by females defending their cubs.
The 24-year-old policeman was on a walk late on Saturday when the bear burst out of undergrowth near the village of Andalo, in the northern region of Trentino-south Tyrol. It pinned him down, biting him and raking his body with its claws, before lumbering off.
The officer was taken to hospital and was due to be discharged yesterday.
“Luckily, it was not too serious,” said Alberto Perli, the mayor of Andalo. “But he has numerous injuries to his back, his arms and legs, as well as scratches all over. It was an unprovoked attack by a male without cubs.”
Residents said the bear had become increasingly bold in recent weeks, ransacking rubbish bins and wandering into villages in search of food.
The two-year-old, 265lb (121kg) bear was captured by forest rangers a few hours later and taken to a wildlife enclosure in Casteller, near Trento.
Maurizio Fugatti, the governor of the autonomous province of Trentino, said there were too many bears and the project was unsustainable and dangerous. “Given the size of our territory and population, the number of bears is too big to manage,” he said, calling for some of the bears to be transferred to other parts of northern Italy.
Conservation groups blamed the authorities’ failure to manage the bears’ relationship with humans.
“Reacting to this by capturing the bear and placing it in captivity is an implicit admission of the incapacity of the authorities to manage the reintroduction of bears,” said Italy’s International Organisation for Animal Protection.
It pointed to North America, where people coexist with bears. Italy, in contrast, was “in the Stone Age” with its attitude to the animals, the organisation added.