| 1 | The origins of Papillon |
Officially, the Papillon story starts in 2018, but the true origin was the Italian rewilding efforts of the late 1990s. Like many places, the alpine Trentino region of northern Italy had lost most of its bear population. Only 1 elderly bear remained, down from 3 in the late 1980s.
So in 1999, the government embarked on “Project Life Ursus” and introduced 10 brown bears from Slovenia. In 2003, 3 cubs were spotted, and as of 2020, the Trentino region has recovered healthily to an estimated 70-90 brown bears. You now have a strong chance of stumbling into a bear on your sun-drenched hiking holiday – 11 year old Alessandro hit headlines last year when he remained as calm as Clint Eastwood and backed off slowly down the mountain trail.
The problem is that bears are now poaching sheep, cows and other livestock for their dinner. Farmers call the whole reintroduction a mistake, with some even dumping the bloody carcasses of slain donkeys by government buildings to protest.
It’s farmers versus the WWF, and starting in late 2018, a radio-tagged bear going by the codename of M49 and weighing 330 pounds caused the biggest stir yet.
| 2 | M49 in typical bear action |
The first proof that M49 was a maniac among bears came in a carnivore study released in early 2019. Conservationists recorded 157 attacks on livestock by bears, with goats, cows and sheep slain alike. 53 were traced to specific bears using radio collars. Bears MJ2G1, M22 and F9 recorded 5 attacks apiece, but M49 was biggest maniac of all, with 11 proven attacks over 2018.
Another news report came in September 2018, when M49 was hit by a car on a forested road in Val Rendena and walked off with only minor injuries, with the car also surviving. M49 massacred several goats, cows and sheep in the area, and by February 28th, Trentino governor Maurizio Fugatti wrote to Sergio Costa, the bear-loving environment minister in Rome, asking for permission to capture the bear. No response came, and Fugatti wrote another letter on April 30th, but by now, M49 was awakening from his winter slumber.
On the morning of May 2nd, farmer Giovanni Leonardi opened his stable doors and saw a horrific sight: his beloved heifer Ida was lying on the floor dead, gutted by a savage assault. Radio collar tracking confirmed that M49 had been in the area, near the small town of Verdesina. The newspapers screamed that 50% of livestock deaths so far in 2019 were down to M49, and that his 2018 antics had cost farmers 31,200 euros.
| 3 | All eyes on M49 |
M49 was fast becoming a national superstar, albeit a notorious one. In early June, he caused yet another outrage when 3 donkeys were found with slash marks on their stomach. 2 died at the scene, in the farmyard of Fiore Amistadi, while another died of its injuries several hours later. The radio collar revealed that M49 had been in the vicinity.
On July 30th, Silvio Martinatti got the shock of his life when he found a huge brown bear rummaging around in his chicken coop. He fired a handgun into the air, and M49 didn’t care. He fired the gun again, and the bear still didn’t leave. The unthinkable was happening – M49 was losing his fear of humans. Soon, the whole of Italy would be potentially be on his dinnertable.
On June 23rd, Trentino governor Maurizio Fugatti announced that if he wasn’t granted permission to capture “the bear of Val Rendena” within three weeks, he would order his forest rangers to grab him anyway. By now, M49 was behind 80% of all carnivore damage to livestock. The entire population of Trentino was living in fear of bears.
| 4 | Ensnared in a tube track |
Starting on July 7th, Fugatti’s henchmen laid 4 tube traps in the forested mountain landscape where M49 had made his home. Each was equipped with a sensor, to instantly notify the rangers when a large animal had been caught.
A tube trap (or Culvert trap) is when food is laid out to tempt the bear, at the end of a giant metal tube like a children’s play area. Drawn to the bait by his superior sense of smell, the hungry bear crawls in, and when he grabs the bait at the opposite end, the gate behind him snaps shut instantly, leaving him trapped. Holes in the metal give him an air supply until the park rangers arrive, and this is exactly what happened to M49.
On the evening of July 14, at around 10:10pm, the signal came in – M49 was ensnared. The first rangers arrived at 10:50, in a forested mountain area at an altitude of 1450m. By 11:15, armed riflemen had arrived and formed a perimeter in the woods. The bear was relatively calm inside its cage, and calmed further when they draped an opaque cloth on it. Thus, the vets made a decision that would have ramifications months down the line: the bear would not be tranquilised. M49 only became agitated briefly when the tube trap was loaded onto a pickup, which departed the mountainside at 0:30am on July 15th.
The destination: Casteller wildlife centre, two hours away, a few minutes drive from the Italian city of Trento.
| 5 | The containment facility |
Every 40 minutes on the journey, the vets stopped the pickup truck and checked on M49, who remained surprisingly calm. What was he planning? Finally, Casteller came into sight. The entire facility was guarded by a 4.5 meter perimeter fence, with 7 steel wires and a 7000 volt electric charge. The bears inside never have contact with this fence, because 1.5 meters within the perimeter, there’s a second fence, this time 1.5 meters tall. Within this fence, the wildlife section is divided by more fences into 3 subareas. Picture an egg white and its yolk, but with the yolk divided into three areas.
The fences were operated by a central control station, and coincidentally, the electricity had been inspected twice in the last 10 days, on July 9 and 12th 2019. Section C was the home of another troublemaker bear, and M49 was unloaded into section A, still in tube trap.
Then the bear squad made a mistake which would haunt them for 9 months. Since he was given his first radio collar on August 22nd 2018, the 3 year old M49 had grown significantly in size, which understandably included his neck. To prevent pain, the vets removed M49’s old collar, which dropped off inside his cage after the team pressed a button remotely. What they didn’t do was immediately give him a larger one.
| 6 | The prison break |
With all fences sealed off and closed, M49 was released from the tube trap at 3:20am, to his new enclosed home. Casteler was no zoo: it was a wooded wildlife enclosure measuring 8000 square meters. But almost instantly, the aggressive bear walked over to a vegetated area and vanished from site. The rangers couldn’t see M49. What was he doing? A loud series of scraping noises answered the question for them.
Suddenly, the control office registered a total failure of the electricity in the first fence. By 4:20am, M49 was walking around inside area 2, causing the second bear to pace around anxiously in section C, before fleeing to her den.
The rangers sprang to action, and summoned their special bear-trained dogs, but amid the confusion, M49 had already hacked his way through to the 7000 voltage perimeter, the final obstacle. This time, he was unable to swipe apart the power supply. M49 seemed to understand the danger of electric fences, having broken through them on his farmyard hunting raids, so his next move was to dig relentlessly. When operators approached to verify this, he growled aggressively at them from behind the fence. M49 gave up digging, and walked around for a while, loosening a steel cable and destroying an electrical insulator.
Then, M49 made his final bid for freedom. The bear charged at the fence, before jumping two metres off his feet and hooking his claws into the fully electrified fence. With 7000 volts running through its body, M49 climbed and climbed like his freedom depended on it, which of course, it did. Then he was over the top, dropping down to other side. The guards had been evacuated, having had no safe location to tranquilise the bear from. 10 minutes later, they returned. All they found were traces of fur and soil on the 7 electrified wires. After scanning the entire Casteler property with a drone, it became clear that M49 was gone. The bear had escaped within 2 hours of entering Casteler wildlife park.
| 7 | Papillon’s glorious 9 months |
On Tuesday July 16th, the first washed out pictures of the newly free M49 emerged, roaming happily in the woods of La Marzola mountain, south of Trento. International news organisations picked up the story of the escape bear, while WWF Italy said that the fence clearly “wasn’t working properly, as bears do not fly”.
M49 escaped from his cell so quickly that his capture and escape were reported in a single story. Trentino president Maurizio Fugatti was furious, and vowed on July 15th that the bear would be shot on sight. National environment minister Sergio Costa was furious, and the forestry department backtracked and said that M49 would only be shot if he posed a threat to human life.
But he wasn’t M49 anymore. His new name, by unanimous social media agreement, was Papillon, after the Steve McQueen prison break film released in 1973.
Without the radio collar, M49 lasted for months in the wild. It was business as usual, as by early August, Papillon had already destroyed some beehives and mauled a calf in the Lavazé pass region, as proven by tufts of brown fur. On August 18th, a hiker came face to face with Papillon near the Bletterbech gorge: “My legs were trembling“. Crazy rumours appeared, like M49 charging out of a forest and upturning a caravan with two shepherds inside – in reality he had just rocked it.
On September 5th, a slain calf showed up in the Lagorai region. Its wounds were evidently bear claw marks. M49 had smartened up and switched regions. In early October, a bull was found dead in the Vanoi area of eastern Trentino, and the authorities were no closer to catching him.
| 8 | Papillon awakens |
Winter came. The plants withered and died, and with them went the sightings of Papillon. The bear was hibernating in a tiny den in the woods somewhere, with only a 1 in a million chance of discovery. The search would have to wait. The authorities ground their teeth. Meanwhile, Facebook groups sprang up calling for the liberation of Papillon, formerly M49. In January, councillors revealed that Papillon had walked into a local tube trap 6 times, but failed to take the bait and trigger the trapping mechanism. Did the bear remember what had happened last time?
March 2nd 2020 marked the official return of Papillon. He celebrated by destroying a beehive in Val Di Fiemme, but was scared away by three dogs. “Papillon out of hibernation”, shouted the headlines. On April 12th, he was filmed playing in the snow, on April 14th, a woman helped to discover brown hair samples which a lab concluded were Papillon’s, and on April 17th, he was filmed in the village of Nago by a speeding motorist. The authorities denied that this was Papillon, before admitting it 10 days later.
Papillon had travelled hundreds of kilometres eastwards, closer to Slovenia, before slowly looping back to Western Trentino, crossing valleys and highways. Now, he was back where he started, and at 9:20pm on April 28th 2020, his 9 month adventure came to an end when he wandered into a tube trap again. The vets showed up again, the riflemen showed up again, and within hours, Papillon was back in Casteller Wildlife Sanctuary. It was only 5 days after he had raided 4 unoccupied alpine huts.
| 9 | The second escape |
Once again, Papillon broke free from his cage within hours, but this time, he was recaptured quickly. They then castrated Papillon, to curb his aggression, but it didn’t achieve anything. He had an intense desire to return to the wild, mainly because he was the wild.
The wildlife centre held the famous bear for over 2 months this time, which ended on July 27th. Unlike his first escape, where the whole ranger team was watching as his cage opened, Papillon made his escape in peace and quiet – it was only discovered when a guard arrived the next morning. Instead of climbing over the fences, Papillon ripped through them. He tore the electrified outer perimeter by the 12mm thick railing, using his massive bear strength to rip himself an opening to slinker through. Papillon the escape artist had triumphed again, and the Trentino president Maurizio Fugatti was forced to announce it himself again, awkwardly interrupting a council meeting. His old friend Sergio Costa at the environment ministry remained supportive: “My position remains the same: every animal must be free to live according to its nature“.
This time, Papillon had a radio collar. He never embarked on the epic journey of 2019-20, but still evaded capture for 42 days, when a tube trap caught him in Lagorai. Facebook posters and environmental organisations such as the WWF rallied to his defence, vowing to initiate legal action.
| 10 | The future of Papillon |
What became of Papillon? As of June 2022, he remains in captivity in Casteller Wildlife Sanctuary. The bear’s darkest hour came in January, when the court of Italy ruled that he would stay in “bear prison” for life. Wildlife organisations had appealed directly against the imprisonment of M49, saying that it breached international wildlife organisations. But the court declared it to be a “legitimate excise of power by the president of Trento”.
But in February, a light shone through, in the form of Bridget Bardot. The 86 year old actress had already written a letter in December in support of M49’s freedom, saying that his imprisonment was “despicable and inhuman, but also embezzlement – a serious abuse of trust”. She warned president Fugatti that “I will create a global scandal and I will not spare you”. Now, she had a slightly more pragmatic idea: move M49 to the “Dancing Bears Park” in Bulgaria, a reserve which she sponsored for rescued performing bears. All 3 bears at Casteller would be moved there, and Fugatti responded that he was seriously considering it. Founded in 2000, the reserve is an oasis of forests, hills and running streams, far away from people. There is hope for Papillon yet.
Regardless of what happens, Papillon the bear will forever be a symbol of freedom, and an icon of sheer will and determination. The one mystery is that we’ll never know which name he prefers – the plucky sounding Papillon or the robotic, Terminator-like M49.
Leave a Reply