Death of Endangered Italian Bear Sparks Concerns for Survival of Its Subspecies

The recent shooting of a famous wild bear in Italy, Amarena, has horrified the country and renewed concerns about the viability of peaceful coexistence between humans and large animals.

Amarena was shot dead at 11 p.m. on August 31 by a man who said he was guarding his chicken coop as she and her two cubs wandered the streets of San Benedetto Dei Marsi in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists the Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus) as severely endangered, making her one of only around 60 of her kind left in the wild. One of Europe’s wildest locations, the Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise National Park is located about an hour’s drive from Rome. The main threats to this subspecies are poaching and vehicle-related deaths.

The average annual birth rate is 3-to-10 cubs, with only 3-to-4 females reproducing. Amarena had more works published than anyone else in history. In 2020, she had an extraordinary litter size of four cubs.

Marsican bears are a popular tourist attraction in the remote mountain communities of Abruzzo. In spite of the national park’s and other organisations’ best efforts, bears continue to wander dangerously close to human settlements.

“The presence of wild animals in villages increases the risk of negative interactions with people and the likelihood of accidents,” says Mario Cipollone, co-founder of Salviamo L’Orso, a non-profit organisation fighting to conserve the Marsican bear from extinction. Associations and institutions fail if certain people intentionally bring bears into cities for financial or other personal gain.

Paula Mayer of ETH Zurich in Switzerland has mapped the most likely places of conflict between bears and humans in Abruzzo using a mathematical model. She discovered a wide range of responses to bears, from welcoming to hostile, depending on whether or not a community relied on tourism or subsistence farming for its economy. Her findings also emphasise the importance of state intervention, such as compensation for property damage caused by bears.

Meyer explains that the map indicates a high possibility of coexistence “in the area where Amarena was killed,” which means that there are few dangers to bears and a high level of human tolerance. “However, a model is still just a model, and it can never accurately predict what will actually occur in the real world.”

People in a region praised for its peaceful cohabitation with enormous predators were caught aback by the news of Amarena’s death.

I think there are parts of Abruzzo that serve as excellent examples of communal living. “We will never reach a deeply rooted and sustainable state of coexistence in the social-ecological system,” argues Mayer, “without a change in values, in the sense that the general population accepts wildlife in a shared landscape even if it brings them no instrumental benefit.”

The state “needs to recognise the protection of nature and endangered species as a national priority, to invest in a culture of knowledge and respect for biodiversity, in the prevention of conflicts with large carnivores,” argues Cipollone.