A court in the north Italian province of Trentino has suspended an order to put down a 17-year-old female bear that killed a man while he was jogging in the woods.
Andrea Papi, who died on 7 April and whose funeral was held on Wednesday, was the first person in Italy in modern times to be killed in a bear attack.
Papi suffered deep wounds to the neck, arms and chest, and an autopsy carried out last week concluded that he had been attacked by a bear, identified by prosecutors as JJ4.
After the attack, the provincial governor, Maurizio Fugatti, a member of the far-right League party, issued an order for the animal to be captured and killed. More than 40 rangers were deployed in the forests near the village of Caldes, to capture the animal by enticing it with bait to walk into a “tube trap”, a device commonly used to catch bears.
But on Friday, a local administrative court gave JJ4 a stay of execution, suspending the order after activists and animal rights groups launched a legal appeal.
This is the second time the court has overturned an order for JJ4 to be put down. The first ruling dates to 2020, after the bear attacked and injured two hikers, a father and son, on Mount Peller.
Ornella Dorigatti, Trentino representative for the International Organization for Animal Protection (OIPA), welcomed the ruling.
“We are glad that the administrative court suspended the order to kill the bear,” she said. “You can’t kill these animals, but [we must] start working on a project to live with them.’’
Bears are at the centre of culture and history in the Trentino-Alto Adige region. Saint Romedius, a fourth-century hermit who is often depicted with a bear by his side, is said to be one of the area’s heavenly protectors. Legend has it that Romedius was on his way to Trento to meet the bishop when his horse was mauled by a bear. The hermit tamed the bear and rode “bearback” to his destination.
But from the 17th century, intensive hunting greatly reduced the number of brown bears in Italy, with city governors paying handsome bounties for the killing of the animals. By 1998, there were only four bears left wild in Trentino.
With the bears close to extinction, the Life Ursus project, which has European Union funding, was launched to reintroduce them into the region.
Nine bears were brought into Trentino from Slovenia, three males and six females. In the early 2000s, the first cubs were born.
There are now about 100 bears in the Trento area, and close encounters with humans are becoming more common.
When the attacks started becoming more frequent, special armed “anti-bear” squads were formed to capture and, if necessary, shoot any bears considered “potentially dangerous”.
WWF said seven people had been attacked by bears in Italy over the last 20 years but this was the first fatal attack.
