Italian authorities on Tuesday announced that they had captured a brown bear overnight after it had killed a jogger earlier this month.
The fate of the 17-year-old female bear, known as JJ4, is now in the hands of an Italian court, which will determine if it should be euthanized. The debate has inflamed tensions over a successful effort to reintroduce brown bears to the region after they nearly went extinct in the 1990s.
The bear was found in Val Meledrio, a valley in the mountains of Northern Italy, the provincial government of Trento said in a news release on Tuesday.
The president of Trento Province, Maurizio Fugatti, said “satisfaction mixes with bitterness” over the capture.
Mr. Fugatti also attempted to have JJ4 euthanized in 2020, after the bear attacked a father and his adult son in June of that year.
“We would have liked to give this news in 2020, but its killing first, and then its capture, had been blocked by the courts,” he said.
Authorities searched for the bear after investigators used genetic testing to determine that JJ4 had fatally attacked Andrea Papi, 26, a jogger from Caldes, a town in Trento. Mr. Papi was found in the woods and an autopsy concluded that he had died from wounds inflicted by a bear on April 5 or 6. Mr. Papi was the first Italian to be killed by a bear in modern times, reported the Italian news agency, ANSA.
After genetic testing confirmed that JJ4 had attacked Mr. Papi, Mr. Fugatti signed an order last week to capture her. He has also issued an order for the bear to be euthanized, but that directive is on hold, pending a decision by a local court, which is scheduled to meet on May 11.
Mr. Fugatti said after Mr. Papi’s death that other authorities in Italy had focused too much on the well-being of the bears, and not enough on the safety of people living in the same areas.
He is also seeking to euthanize the bear MJ5, which attacked a man in March.
There were an estimated 73 to 92 bears in Trento in 2021, the government said. The brown bear population in the region had shrunk to three or four bears in the 1990s and faced extinction before the project, Life Ursus, brought 10 bears from Slovenia to the region between 1999 and 2002.
Animal welfare groups have pushed back against his efforts. On Monday, the advocacy group Animalisti Italiani said that the provincial government had not done enough to minimize the chances of dangerous interactions between bears and humans.
“Our cohabitation with the big predators that have always populated our country is not only possible, with the right precautions, but also necessary,” the group said in a statement.
Trento’s forest department captured JJ4 this week using a tube trap and took her to a local wildlife center. She was found with her three two-year-old bears, which were deemed self-sufficient and were left behind, officials said.
At the wildlife center, JJ4 is being fed fruit and vegetables, officials said. She weighs about 330 pounds and is in good health.
Ilaria Parogni contributed reporting.
