| 1 | Ancient times: Roman empire |
Brown bears have been roaming Italy for as long as Italy has existed, and the first solid references started with the notorious colosseum battles and their gladiators. Commodus was a Roman emperor who was brought up by his father Marcus Aurelius to be a wise and stoic ruler, but went in completely the opposite direction. His vice was gladiatorial combat, and he would often stride into colosseum dressed in golden lion pelts like his idol Hercules, or even completely naked.
Soon, he longed to become an animal fighter, or a bestiarius. Alongside shooting the heads off ostriches, he was said to have commanded the whole of Rome to watch as he leaned over the balustrade railing and picked off 100 bears in an hour with a bow and arrow. To celebrate the bears’ deaths, he grabbed a cup of chilled wine from a nearby woman and drank it in one gulp, causing the whole (terrified) colosseum to shout “long life to you”.
Another bear incident involved a beastiari who was sentenced for his crimes to be killed by a boar. Unfortunately, this mad boar gored its handler, forcing the guards to shoot it. So instead, they brought a hulking brown bear to the colosseum, but this bear refused to leave its cage. Ultimately, the prisoner had his throat torn out by a barbary leopard. Carpophorus the bestiari was said to have slain a bear, tiger and lion all at once.
| 2 | Orsanti trainers |
In the 1700s, the Apennine regions of central Italy like Tuscany were desperately poor, selling cheese and chestnuts to scrape out a meagre living. So one day, they looked to the local woods and decided to became bear trainers, AKA orsanti, a phenomenon which continued until the 1920s.
These bear tamers travelled Europe, charging people to see their act. Apparently, London alone had 600 orsanti working as “street artists”, particularly from villages from the foot of Mount Pelpi. One village called Cavignaga had 60 bear trainers among a population of 200 – this mostly consisted of old women, daughters, and abandoned “bear widows”, as the sons were also dragged away for bear training. This tiny village alone created 4 bear circuses, including the Volpi family bear circus which performed in London, and another which performed in Athens to mark Greek independence in 1843.
At one point, 85% of all migrants from the Appenines were leaving for “exhibition of animals in foreign lands”. They walked with their bears on foot and reached Hamburg after 1 month, which was the most popular orsanti rerouting centre to other European cities. Ultimately, many of the orsanti moved on to more exotic animals like parrots, monkeys and camels – Antonio Bernabò was one orsanti who bought a small circus, and ended up filthy rich.
| 3 | 20th century demise |
By the 1930s, the bears of northern Italy were in a bleak state, so few in number that Emperor Commodus would be shocked (although he would probably take credit for it). 19th century hunters were offered 40 florins for bear kills, and proposals in 1919 to create a national park in the alpine region of Adamello Brenta were protested by impoverished, bear-fearing farmers, who had just faced World War 1. Hunters were banned from targeting bears in their winter dens, but only in 1923 and 1931.
Things improved slightly in 1939, when Mussolini banned bear hunting across the whole of Italy. A crack squad of fascist goons called Milizia Nazionale Forestale massively increased their surveillance of the alps (perhaps these guys should have been fighting the war for them), and consequently, only 1 Italian bear was shot from 1938 to 1943, compared to 6 in 1936 and 1937. Protecting bears was possible, but in 1945, 5 bears were killed again. Flashy webcams and GPS collars didn’t exist in the 1940s – there were no other defences.
By 1950, the Italian regions of Brenta and Adamello massif were the only surviving bear colonies in the Alps. By 1980, there were 14-16 bears left in northern Italy, and after 1989, no evidence was found of reproduction.
The nadir came in 1996-97, when a professional, intensive monitoring program only spotted 3 bears. By 2000, a single elderly native male bear remained. Not even the most wildly optimistic bear biologist would argue that they could recover now. Something had to be done.
| 4 | The reintroduction begins |
In May 1999, a hungry female bear sniffed out some meat in the forests of Slovenia. Just when she’d located her prize, she was shocked to feel an indestructible metal door slam shut behind her. She was caught in a tube trap, and on May 28th, she and a second bear called Kirka were released into the forests of Adamello Brenta national park 1000 miles away. Bleary-eyed and confused, they took their first tentative steps in Italy. 8 more Slovenian bears were introduced over the next 2 years.
Now the conservationists could only wait and see. Would they breed or would they be shot dead by angry farmers? In spring 2002, the first two cubs appeared, followed by one in spring 2003. Then in 2004, conservationists erupted in rapturous applause when Daniza and Jurka emerged from their winter dens with 3 cubs apiece.
From 1999 to 2005, a total of $170,000 in bear compensation was paid to farmers, less severe than the Pyrenees reintroduction. A 21-strong bear management team patrolled Trentino firing rubber bullets into bears that stubbornly wouldn’t give up, and farmers were granted mobile electric fences to protect their ever-wandering sheep herds on the high alpine meadows.
Jurka was a particular troublemaker. She developed a taste for garbage and chickens early on, and ventured into towns to get them, but was spared due to being such a cub-making machine.
| 5 | Daniza and her mischief |
Many characters have come and gone in the saga of the Italian bears, but one of the original reintroduced females was Daniza. Just weeks after her release in 2000, she was already up to some mild mischief, relaxing for two days in the town park of Riva del Garda before being escorted out by a police guard. In spring 2004, she performed a magic trick and emerged from her den with 3 cubs.
By 2012, Daniza was the mother of 5 bear cubs, and her home range was estimated to be 346 km². That’s not too shabby for a female bear, which are less adventurous than males – it’s an area slightly smaller than Dublin. In 2012, Daniza achieved a new high score of 15,400 euros worth of damage, which made up 16% of total Italian bear damage that year. She was a particularly feisty bear, and unfortunately, that sparked the chain of events that led to her demise.
On August 15th 2014, Daniza badly mauled a mushroom forager called Daniel Maturi on a mountainside near the village of Pinzolo, while defending her cubs. The authorities spent weeks trying to entice Daniza into a tube trap, but when they succeeded, the 19 year old Daniza died after being injected with an anaesthetic. Her heart must have stopped, and there was uproar from environmentalists. Normally, defensive mother bears are spared by rangers, like the popular mother bear 399 from Yellowstone, who attacked a teacher in 2007 but has been peaceful ever since.
| 6 | The Marsican bear |
The South Tyrol bears aren’t the only bear population of Italy. The country has 2 fully divided brown bear pockets. The alpine Trentino bears roam the far north and occasionally stray into Switzerland and Austria, and belong to the common Eurasian brown bear (ursus arctos arctos) subspecies. Then there’s a secretive colony of bears in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, just 40km east of Rome. While many scientists disagree and place them in ursus arctos arctos, these Abruzzo bears are believed to be their own subspecies which diverged 5000-1500 years ago – the Marsican brown bear (ursus arctos marcicanus). If true, they would be the 2nd most endangered subspecies in Eurasia after the gobi bear. Only 40 remain, all within the 190 square mile Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park.
This region tends to be ignored by tourists, considered to be a rural backwater, yet it’s a lush environment of forests, valleys and swamps which boasts 63 protected species. It’s part of the Apennine mountain range, which stretches down the entire spine of Italy from north to south. The Marsican bear’s skull shape is slightly different, and it’s a particularly peaceful bear, with not a single recorded attack on humans. It’s said that because of the park’s close proximity to nearby villages, the most aggressive Marsican bears died out long ago.
100 Marsican bears were recorded in the 1980s, and in 2010, only 13 healthy breeding females remained, which is just on the precipice of sufficient genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding.
| 7 | 2012 situation |
By 2012, the Trentino bears back up north had recovered to 38-43 bears. This was below the viable level for a population of 40-60, but exceeded the 1999 prediction of 5-10% yearly growth. Not all had survived, but 53 cubs had been born in 10 years. Most importantly, a 1250km2 swathe of Trentino had a stable population of breeding females. By 2017, the official estimate was between 52 and 63 bears
If we do some calculations briefly, then the mean average of the bears in 2012 and 2017 were 40.5 and 57.5 respectively, an increase of 41.9%. Now let’s extrapolate this to centuries ahead. The calculations clearly show that if current trends persist, Italy’s Trentino region will have 1902 bears by 2067, and 62,950 by 2117! It’s all steam ahead for Italy’s bears.
Unfortunately, one statistic wasn’t so rosy. In 2003, two thirds of the Trentino public favoured the reintroduction of bears, but by 2011, this had swung round to two thirds being opposed. Farmers received 80,000 euros in bear compensation in 2017, but one happier statistic is that not a single death has occurred during the reintroduction. There were only two attacks from 2000-2015: the mushroom hunter incident involving Daniza in 2014, and a runner who was attacked on June 10th 2015, by a bear called KJ2. Unfortunately, this bear was soon to spark more negative controversy.
| 8 | Bear incidents heat up |
On July 22nd 2017, 69-year-old Angelo Metlicovec was walking his 18 month old dog Cirar in the Mt Bondone area when he heard a rushing sound behind him. He span around, only to be confronted by KJ2, defending the safety of her cubs. She stopped her bluff charge 1 meter away, but Metlicovec made the mistake of whacking her with a stick. In a frenzied attack lasting just 30 seconds, KJ2 went for Metlicovec’s throat and was only blocked when he thrust his arm in the way, which she almost ripped off, before the barkings of his loyal dog scared her away.
Doctors worked furiously to restore movement to the man’s fingers, while conservationists pointed out that the man was walking his dog without a lead and that he’d provoked KJ2. WWF Italy stated that “bears must not pay the price for human errors”, but nevertheless, JK2 was shot dead on August 12th with a single bullet, the first legal shooting since the 1999 reintroduction.
She was 15.5 years old, and was caring for her 6th litter, two cubs which would now be forced to survive the snowy alpine winter by themselves, with no hibernation training.
By now, the bears still co-existed more peacefully than in the Pyrenees, where protesting farmers dragged carcasses of sheep all the way to government buildings. However, pillaged beehives and slain sheep had become a regular occurrence.
| 9 | Italy enters the bear timeline |
One particular nuisance was Papillon the escape bear, who was responsible for 80% of all large carnivore livestock damage in early 2019. After being captured and taken to Casteller Wildlife enclosure in July 2019, he escaped in just 2 hours. He jumped four electric fences, leaving tatted remnants of fur. His escape lasted 9 months and his antics sold thousands of tabloid newspapers.
June 2020 saw the sensation of 12 year old bear fanatic Allessandro, whose wishes were fulfilled when he stumbled into a brown bear in the bushes while hiking in a sun-drenched Trentino. He stayed perfectly calm, and after following the boy for a whole minute, standing on its hind legs occasionally, the bear lost interest and strutted down the mountainside.
The world’s media cheered at the boy’s nerve, but one month later, the reintroduction story took a darker turn when 59 year old Fabio Misseroni and his son Christian were attacked on Mount Peller. The bear broke Fabio’s leg in 3 places before his son scared it away. 15,000 people signed a Worldwide Fund for Nature petition to save the bear, but a “death sentence” was slammed down by Trentino governor Maurizio Fugatti, who had earlier been keen on having Papillon shot. Rome’s environment minister Sergio Costa called for mercy – this bear lover had been a supporter of Papillon.
No update was ever given on this June 2020 bear. Either it escaped or was quietly dealt with in secret.
| 10 | Where do the bears stand today? |
In northern Italy, the most recent bear data (2019) shows an estimated 50-68 bears compared to just 3 in 1997. The breeding grounds are heavily concentrated in western Trentino, while central Trentino has a large nonbreeding area where adventurous males commonly stray. Northeast Italy has another hub due to cross-border migrants from Slovenia.
The Marsican bears of central Italy are also plotting their comeback, aided by the humans who they so wisely never attack. Salviamo L’Orso (save the bears) has been busy fencing beehives, installing Yellowstone-style bear proof bins, and vaccinating dogs to prevent them from transmitting infectious diseases.
The nearby roads have been lined with special headlight-reflecting lights, designed to warn bears when cars are coming. 6 water tanks have been renovated, to avoid a repeat of a 2018 tragedy where a mother Marsican bear and cubs plunged into a tank and drowned.
One priority is to plant beech trees over deforested mountains, to create natural corridors of wilderness, part of a master plan to link the scattered pockets into one giant bear habitat. This would massively increase their range and ability to breed. Beech trees are perfect because they also have the nuts which Marsican bears love to feed on. 2019 alone saw 24km of dangerous barbed wire removed, 61 electric fences installed, 3 bear-proof chicken houses built, and 14 bear proof metal doors installed.
It’s now estimated that 60 Marsican bears inhabit Abruzzo. There is a fighting chance that this (possible) subspecies may survive yet.
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