Bear that killed Italian jogger had previously attacked two others

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian prosecutors on Wednesday identified the bear responsible for killing a 26-year-old runner in the Alps last week as one that had previously attacked two other people.

Local authorities have asked for the animal to be put down after the attack on Andrea Papi, whose body was found on April 6 in the region of Trentino-Alto Adige. His funeral will take place later on Wednesday.

They had applied for the bear to be euthanised in 2020, when it attacked a father and son near the same area. A court ruling overturned the decision at that time.

Prosecutors in the northern city of Trento said DNA samples taken after the attack on Papi matched a female bear identified as “JJ4”.

The 17-year-old bear wears a GPS-equipped radio collar that should track its movements. The last update on the official monitoring page of the Trento province website, before Papi’s death, said updates on the position of the bear were temporarily suspended due to the faulty signal from its radio collar.

The incident has reopened a debate on human-wildflife conflict in an area that was re-populated with bears from 1999 under an EU-funded programme.

Data provided by Trento’s provincial authorities showed that bear population in the region totalled around 100 animals in 2021.

Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin met local authorities on Tuesday to discuss a response to the attack, including the use of anti-aggression sprays as well as the mass relocation of Trentino’s bear population to other Italian regions or even abroad.

(Reporting by Federico Maccioni; Additional reporting by Emilio Parodi; Editing by Alison Williams)