Killing of rare Marsican brown bear Amarena raises fears for future of its subspecies

The killing of a widely known wild bear named Amarena has shocked Italy and raised recent doubts about whether or not people and enormous carnivores can coexist peacefully.

At 11pm on 31 August, Amarena was wandering by the streets of San Benedetto Dei Marsi within the Abruzzo area of Italy together with her two cubs, when she was shot useless by a person who mentioned he was defending his hen coop.

She was one among round 60 remaining Marsican brown bears (Ursus arctos marsicanus), a subspecies of the Eurasian brown bear categorised as critically endangered by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature. It’s primarily discovered within the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise Nationwide Park, one among Europe’s wildest areas, round an hour’s drive away from Rome. Poaching and collisions with automobiles and trains are the main causes of loss of life for the subspecies.

Sometimes, solely three to 4 females reproduce annually, having a complete of three to 10 new child cubs. Amarena was probably the most prolific particular person ever recognized. In 2020, she gave start to 4 cubs, an unusually excessive quantity.

Marsican bears are sometimes noticed wandering across the small mountain villages in Abruzzo, and they’re an attraction for vacationers. However for the security of bears and folks, the nationwide park and different establishments have tried unsuccessfully to stop them from approaching villages.

“The presence of untamed animals in villages will increase the danger of damaging interactions with individuals and the probability of accidents,” says Mario Cipollone, the co-founder of Salviamo L’Orso, a non-profit organisation working to avoid wasting the Marsican bear from extinction. “If there are individuals who lure bears into cities for financial or egocentric causes, efforts by associations and establishments to maintain these animals out of cities fail.”

Paula Mayer at ETH Zurich in Switzerland has studied the coexistence of bears and people in Abruzzo, utilizing a mathematical mannequin to map the areas in which conflict is more likely. She discovered there may be large variation in individuals’s perspective in the direction of bears, with extra constructive views in communities that revenue from tourism and extra hostility in these depending on subsistence farming. Her analysis additionally reveals that state funding, akin to monetary compensation for harm attributable to bears, is essential for fostering constructive attitudes in the direction of wildlife.

“Within the space the place Amarena was killed, the map reveals a excessive likelihood of coexistence, which means each threats to bears are low and human tolerance is excessive,” says Meyer. “Nevertheless, a mannequin stays a mannequin and may by no means predict with certainty what is going to occur in actuality.”

The killing of Amarena has taken individuals without warning in a area that has been touted for instance of coexistence between people and enormous carnivores.

“I imagine that some areas of Abruzzo are actually fashions of coexistence. Nevertheless, and not using a change in values, within the sense that the overall inhabitants accepts wildlife in a shared panorama even when it brings them no instrumental profit, we are going to by no means attain a deeply rooted and sustainable state of coexistence within the social-ecological system,” says Mayer.

“There’s a want for the state to recognise the safety of nature and endangered species as a nationwide precedence, to spend money on a tradition of information and respect for biodiversity, within the prevention of conflicts with giant carnivores,” says Cipollone.