Kill 8 bears a year between now and 2026, the decision of the Province of Trento

The Province of Trento will be able to kill up to 8 bears per year:animal rights associations ready to appeal to all judicial bodies.

• The Provincial Council of Trento approved the bill passed by the Council:up to 8 bears per year may be killed "to contain the population growth trend".
• Among the 8 bears there cannot be more than 2 females and 2 adult males.
• The indignation of animal rights associations, ready to appeal to the TAR, in Europe and also to the Constitutional Court.

Let's prepare for more M90 ​​cases.The Province of Trento will be able to demolish up to 8 bears per year in 2024 and 2025, to "contain the growth trend of the bear population in Trentino", which according to the latest estimate formulated in Large carnivores report 2022 exceeds 100 units (also taking into account the small ones).Starting from 2026, the maximum number of bears to be sacrificed will be redefined together with ISPRA, based on updated demographic data.

Up to 8 bears a year, of which only 4 adults

The Provincial Council, late in the evening of Monday 4 March, definitively approved the bill which had been passed in January, on pproposal from forestry councilor Roberto Failoni, and which confirms the power for the president of the Province of Trento to order the culling of individual problematic specimens (up to a maximum of 8 bears per year) as a measure of permanent removal from the natural environment.Exactly as done by president Maurizio Fugatti, only last February 6 with M90, the confident bear (but never aggressive towards humans) shot down because he was guilty of having followed a young couple for a few hundred meters.Not only that:the law provides that among these 8 bears per year there must be no more than two adult females and no more than two adult males, so the other 4 will evidently be young specimens.

While the Provincial Council approved the text yesterday, outside there was a live protest from various animal rights and environmentalist associations, who had already rebelled when, on the occasion of the killing of M90, they had not even been given time to appeal to the TAR .

The indignation of animal rights associations

According to councilor Failoni, "this is an important change of pace" which puts a brake on "the surge in the population of plantigrades, to guarantee people's safety, with the effect of also improving the working conditions of farmers and those who work in the forestry environment”.For the WWF however, the decision of the autonomous Province of Trento, which gives the green light to the killing of 8 bears a year, "is demagogic and is based on assumptions that the majority of scientific studies and international experiences deny:culls are not the correct way to mitigate conflict and promote coexistence.Once again the institution instead chooses the easy shortcut road to address in the worst way the issue of coexistence between man and large carnivores".According to animal rights associations, "those who today decide to kill 8 problem bears a year have done too little in recent years in the field of prevention and communication.What was lacking was adequate information and awareness-raising work towards the resident populations and widespread and concrete actions in the field of conflict prevention and the onset of problematic behavior in bears".

Even theOipa, the international animal protection organisation, reiterates how the bear is protected by national and community provisions and announces battle:first and foremost the start of a procedure EU Pilot, a cooperation mechanism between the European Commission and the Member States which allows it to be verified whether Union law is respected and correctly applied, and the appeal before the Court of Administrative Justice of Trento of ordinances and decrees of President Fugatti in the case of identifying individual specimens to be killed.With the reservation then to resort to Constitutional Court.