Authorities in northern Italy have captured a bear that fatally mauled a jogger and became the focus of a battle over what to do with the country’s growing brown bear population.
Officials in Trento announced on Tuesday that the bear, identified as Jj4, had been captured overnight.
Andrea Papi, 26, was killed during a mountain training run between 5-6 April. The Trento provincial authorities ordered that the bear be killed but an animal rights group appealed to an administrative court, which suspended the order on 11 April.
Jj4 is the same Alpine brown bear who injured a father and son out walking in the region in 2020. Then too, provincial authorities decided to kill her but a court blocked the move.
She was born to two bears brought to Italy from Slovenia two decades ago as part of a European programme to repopulate the brown bear population that had been dwindling, which has now rebounded and is increasingly having close encounters with humans.
Papi’s family had said they did not want the bear to be culled.
