Local authorities in the northern Italian Alps killed a mother bear deemed "dangerous" on Tuesday, citing an attack on a French tourist earlier in July and other encounters with humans. 

Animal rights groups protested the move, as did an Italian government minister. 

The bear, known as KJ1, had three cubs. The International Organization for Animal Protection (OIPA) said they would struggle to survive on their own. 

What happened to the bear? 

The head of the provincial authority in Trento, Maurizio Fugatti, gave the order to the local forestry corps to use the bear's tracking collar to hunt it down and shoot it. 

"KJ1 was a dangerous specimen," the local authority said.

"The animal was found to be responsible for at least seven interactions with humans," including the July 16 attack on a 43-year-old French hiker in the municipality of Dro. 

The hiker escaped with injuries to his arm and leg and was able to call for help.

Federal minister, animal rights groups critical

Italy's national environment minister condemned the regional authority's decision. 

"The killing of individual bears is not the solution to the problem," Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said in a statement, adding that he had told Fugatti this was his belief. 

However, Fratin did acknowledge that action was likely necessary, saying sterilization might be one solution.

He said it had been a mistake, in hindsight, to try to market the bear repopulation program — which began with EU support back in 1999 in several Alpine countries — to potential tourists as an attraction.

Animal rights group OIPA meanwhile said the 22-year-old mother's death was a disaster for her cubs. 

"Animals are sentient beings to be respected and looked after and not objects to be removed," OIPA said in a statement, accusing Fugatti of pursuing an "anti-bear" strategy.

It also said the order to kill the bear had been issued overnight, making it impossible to challenge the measure legally at the last minute, as rights groups had successfully in past cases.

Latest issue in 25-year bid to repopulate Alps with brown bears

In 2023, another bear in Trento, JJ4, was facing a kill order that the courts ultimately stayed.

Currently there are plans to relocate the bear, which had killed a jogger, from captivity in Italy to a sanctuary in Germany. 

This February, a bear designated M90 was also shot and killed in the region.

The area around the city of Trento has recorded nine cases of aggression against humans by bears during the roughly 25-year repopulation project. Similar problems have been documented in other Alpine neighbors like Slovakia.

This has prompted questions about whether the region can still sustain such creatures, given how much more densely populated and frequently visited it is  compared to the era when bears still roamed Europe's Alps in numbers.

Famously, at least in Germany, one of the first bears in the Alpine repopulation project to be shot and killed was a brown bear given the name Bruno (or JJ1, to use the formal tracking names the project gives to the animals).

He wandered into the Austrian and Bavarian Alps in the first half of 2006 and was ultimately shot by hunters, albeit after failed efforts to capture the animal alive.

msh/wmr (AFP, Reuters)