A bear that killed a 26-year-old man while he was jogging in the woods close to a mountain village in northern Italy has been identified as a 17-year-old female that had previously attacked two people.
Andrea Papi, whose funeral was taking place on Wednesday, was the first person in Italy to be killed in a bear attack in modern times.
Prosecutors in the province of Trento identified the bear as JJ4, who had already been deemed dangerous after she attacked Fabio Misseroni and his son Christian close to a refuge hut on Monte Peller in June 2020.
After that attack, the provincial governor, Maurizio Fugatti, issued an order for the animal to be captured and killed, but this was suspended by an administrative court after opposition from animal rights groups. The order was also challenged by Italy’s environment minister at the time, Sergio Costa.
It was agreed that the bear would instead be fitted with a radio collar. However, the battery for the device ran flat and so JJ4’s location was no longer traceable.
Misseroni and his son received serious wounds to the legs. On Wednesday, Misseroni told LaPresse news agency: “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I heard the news this morning and I feel really, really sick.”
Papi received injuries to his neck, arms and chest in the attack on 5 April near his village of Caldes. His family raised the alarm after he failed to return from his run. His body was found in a wooded area.
In a letter published by the Italian media on Tuesday, Papi’s mother, Franca Ghirardini, said her family “will fight to the end to get justice for my Andrea”. She wrote: “My soul and that of my family is devastated by immense pain, we can’t get over it. Knowing that Andrea was at the mercy of the bear devastates me.”
JJ4 was born in Trento after mating between two bears that had been brought to Italy from Slovenia in the early 2000s through Life Ursus, a project aimed at reversing the area’s dwindling brown bear population.
There are now about 100 bears in the Trento area, and close encounters with humans are becoming more frequent. A man was attacked by another bear, called MJ5, in the same province in March.
Fugatti has again issued an order for JJ4 to be captured and killed. Forest rangers will endeavour to capture the animal by enticing it with bait to walk into a “tube trap”, a device commonly used to capture bears.
In a statement last Friday, the Italian unit of WWF acknowledged that the bear would need to be put down once identified. WWF said seven people had been attacked by bears in Italy over the last 20 years and this was the first fatal attack.
