Fugatti, new order to cull Kj1 bear. Animal rights activists ready to appeal to the Tar

"A man's life is worth more than a bear's. We cannot wait for the council chamber of the TAR: 5 September is too far away'. The president of the Autonomous Province of Trento Maurizio Fugatti has revoked the first order of killing of the bear KJ1, held responsible for the 16 July attack on a French tourist just above the village of Dro. The ordinance had been suspended by the Regional Administrative Court after exceptions and appeals by animal welfare associations. So Fugatti decided to sign another one, putting the specimen's genetic 'identity card' on paper. The document - unlike Fugatti's first measure, which was suspended by the Regional Administrative Court after opposition from animal rights activists - contains the results of tests conducted in the laboratories of the Mach Foundation in San Michele all'Adige on biological samples of the plantigrade collected by the Provincial Forestry Corps at the site of the attack, which took place in the woods between San Giovanni a Monte and Dro. It is therefore certain that Kj1 is indeed the culprit.

The new ordinance gave the go-ahead for the placement of a tube trap to catch and subsequently cull the plantigrade. And four have been placed in the area. The foresters are searching for the animal, which is accompanied by cubs, described as three 'sub-adult' young specimens. of which 'we are certain that they can live without their mother,' commented the competent councillor Roberto Failoni.

"We will respond with a new appeal to the Tar," says Massimo Vitturi, head of Lav's wildlife department. "With the pretext of damage to tourism - which is Fugatti's full and exclusive responsibility due to his failure to provide information and make the paths safe - the real intentions of the president of the Province of Trento are made clear: to slaughter all the bears that the Province itself brought to that territory more than twenty years ago," says Vitturi. 'Just two days after the Trento Regional Administrative Court suspended his order, the president of the autonomous province is re-proposing it in the hope of circumventing the administrative court's ruling. We cannot accept this: as an animal activist, I will fight in every appropriate forum to stop this obsession of Trentino politicians with bears,' says the deputy of Noi moderati Michela Vittoria Brambilla, president of the Italian League for the Defence of Animals and the Environment and of the Parliamentary Intergroup for Animal Rights and Environmental Protection, commenting on the new ordinance. 'The plantigrade,' Brambilla emphasises, 'has become, in spite of itself, the number one enemy of the Trentino forestry corps, which will act in the coming hours. There cannot and must not be a repeat of the case of the M90 bear, shot at the same time as the decree sentencing it to death was issued, in order to prevent animal welfare associations from lodging an appeal. All the more so since - let us remember - Kj1 is a mother moving around with three baby bears: its killing would also seriously jeopardise their survival. We can no longer accept this no-holds-barred war on wild animals'.

Meanwhile, following the discovery of the corpses of a female bear and her cub in the municipality of Vallelaghi, in Trentino, Enpa, the national animal protection agency, has lodged a new complaint with the Trento Public Prosecutor's Office against unknown persons for killing animals. "Contrary to what has been said by the provincial authorities, who hastened to dismiss the incident as a natural occurrence, the animal welfare association believes that in this case too, as has already happened with MJ5 and F36, the death of the two plantigrades may have been caused by an act of poaching,' Enpa stated in a note. "It is right and proper that silence should not fall on this affair, as happened with other deaths, but that all the necessary investigations should be carried out to verify the real causes of the death of the mother bear and her cub. Enpa also asks 'that, should the hypothesis of animalicide be confirmed, everything possible be done to identify and punish those responsible in an exemplary manner'. It asks the Province instead to 'launch an anti-poaching plan to prevent the death of other wild animals.

And on Fugatti's orders, Enpa writes: 'The first order had been blocked by the Regional Administrative Tribunal for the obvious shortcomings of the act. With this new death sentence, Maurizio Fugatti contradicts himself and acknowledges before public opinion that the first killing order was wrong in form, as well as in substance. That order had no other premise than to find a pretext to kill a bear'. According to the animal-rights association, 'the second order issued by the Pat also contains obvious flaws of form and substance, since, although it identifies Kj1 as the animal involved in the Dro incident (the first order does not contain any indication in this regard), it does not provide exhaustive details on the dynamics of the incident'. "We have presented a request for access to the deeds to find out the Forestry Department's report, but,' Enpa continues, 'it is not certain that the Pat will comply and, above all, that it will do so quickly. Moreover, in the past, when we asked the Province for information, we were met with a rubber wall. We feel it is only right that all the details of the matter be made public. Right now, without questioning the good faith of the tourist, any factor, even carelessness, could have caused the accident'.