A bear that mauled a jogger to death in Italy has been captured by authorities sparking a debate on whether or not she should be euthanised.
Officials in Trento revealed that the mother bear, known as Jj4, had been captured overnight on Monday in a tube trap, baited by fresh fruit.
She was sedated and taken to a holding chamber as authorities make a final decision on her fate.
Her three “self-sufficient” cubs, who are both two years old, were with her at the time but were separated from their mother and freed unharmed.
Andrea Papi, 26, was killed by Jj4 while out on a mountain training run between April 5 and 6.
After identifying Jj4 as his killer through her DNA, Trento provincial authorities ordered her to be euthanised, but animal rights groups appealed to an administrative court, which suspended the order.
Papi’s family also said they didn’t want the bear culled.
Jj4 is the same Alpine brown bear that injured a father and son out walking in the region in 2020. Following that incident Trento provincial authorities also ordered her killed but a court blocked the move.
At a news conference Tuesday, Trento’s provincial president, Maurizio Fugatti, expressed anger that Papi’s death could have been avoided if Jj4 had been euthanised after her first dangerous encounter with humans.
He denounced as “ideological” the arguments by animal rights groups that have opposed selective euthanasia for known aggressive bears like Jj4, and said the province would have preferred to have euthanised her on the spot, and still hopes to pending a final court ruling.
Jj4 was born to two bears brought to Italy from Slovenia two decades ago as part of an EU-funded program to repopulate the brown bear population that had been dwindling to the point of near extinction.
The Life Ursus project began in 1999 with the introduction of three males and six female bears in the Trento forests, aiming to rebuild the population to 40-60 bears over a few decades.
But the population has rebounded to more than 100 identified bears, according to Italian news reports, and is increasingly having encounters with the human population.
