[ad_1]
This time his freedom lasted 42 days. The M49 bear was captured in the Lagorai mountains, in the east of Trentino, by the men of the Provincial Forestry Corps using a tube trap already used in the past for this same specimen that the Minister of the Environment Sergio Costa since 15 of July 2019. On the day of his first escape from the Casteller complex, he had renamed it ‘Papillon’.
The M49 bear, against which the autonomous province of Trento had issued an order to kill if it created danger to humans, was again transferred to the Casteller di Trento wildlife enclosure, the only facility in Trentino capable of hosting it and from where it already escaped twice. Inside the wildlife center there are already two bears, M57, captured in Andalo last week, and for some years the bear DJ3.
Celebrate the Coldiretti: “The capture makes those who live in the mountains breathe a sigh of relief and feel helpless in the face of the dangers of a specimen whose aggression has been scientifically proven, which alone is responsible for 30 percent of the damage caused by the bears present in Trentino”.
Animal rights activists are outraged instead.The first to intervene is theEnpa which defines its capture as an “extreme act of an ignoble persecution of the animal symbol of biodiversity, freedom and nature. A bear that has never been guilty of any act of aggression against humans but has become a political game in spite of itself. We will also address the European Union but we ask immediately for a very energetic and immediate intervention by the Minister of the Environment Costa. We also wonder is there evidence of the animal’s identification?
“Sedated, castrated and captured again with a tube trap: no more rage against the M49” says the Low requesting that “the procedure provided for in the interregional action plan for the conservation of the brown bear in the central-eastern Alps (Pacobace) be applied, or that the bear be re-equipped with a radio-electric collar, which will allow it, shortly, goes into hibernation. ‘
“We hope that the M49 bear will be released, but if the Autonomous Province of Trento persists in its myopic policy, we strongly request that the captivity of the M49 be carried out in a large and adequate structure that respects the psycho-physical well-being of the ‘animal. A structure certainly different from that of Casteller, which, on the other hand, has shown its obvious and serious structural insufficiency. ”This is what Wwf which also requires “being part of a control working group, which will be established as a matter of urgency, to verify the suitability of the structures and compliance with the welfare conditions of the imprisoned bears.”
A 14-month history
The M49 bear, the Casteller and the rangers, a long story, 14 months. The most sought-after plantigrade in Europe, almost four years old and weighing about 180 kilograms, the author of two daring escapes, in the last period it was stationed in the Lagorai, a vast mountain range that extends between the Val di Fiemme and the Valsugana touching First. and a part of the Belluno area.
In recent weeks, searches had become more difficult because the bear had shed the radio collar that constantly broadcast its position. That of the M49 bear, renamed ‘Papillon’ by Environment Minister Sergio Costa, who had opposed his assassination by the governor of Trentino Maurizio Fugatti from the beginning, is a long series of episodes that spanned days and weeks internal pages of national newspapers and extensive dedicated television reports.
In the summer of 2019, the plantigrade story was the most followed in Italy before the August government crisis. The history of M49 begins on a summer night, from Sunday 14 to Monday 15 July last year. Captured by Trentino Forest Corps staff through a pipe trap in the Val San Valentino forests in Val Rendena, the bear was taken to the Casteler wildlife area. Locked up around 3 o’clock at night, having taken off the radio collar that allowed monitoring the movement, the bearded man after about two hours managed to escape by climbing the 7,000-volt electrified fence certified by the ministry and Ispra. For several weeks he was “photographed” in the forests of Marzola between Trento and Valsugana. Fugatti had intervened with the order that provided for the capture and possibly, if dangerous for humans, even the slaughter: a decision that generated controversy with the animal rights activists who requested the intervention of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. As the days passed, the sightings of the M49 bear were less and less. At the beginning of August, a year ago, the movements, although silent because they did not leave any particular traces of ‘food’, began to become more frequent, from Vigolana to the Cembra valley to Alto Adige.
On the eve of mid-August, some Faedo hunters reported bear tracks in the mud to foresters in South Tyrol. At that time in the province of Bolzano there was another problem, that of the wolf tearing sheep in the mountain farms. An issue that certainly did not play in favor of the M49 bear which, to aggravate the situation, had also terrorized a hiker – a journalist from the Rai branch in Bolzano (Sender Bozen) – in the Bletterbach canyon and frightened two shepherds who they were at night. inside a caravan in the area of the Oclini pass. The governor of South Tyrol, Arno Kompatscher, following the example of Pacobace’s plan, had also signed an ordinance equal to that of the ‘cousins’ of Trentino that provided for the capture and, in case of danger to man, also death . He continued to roam freely between forests and mountains.
The last trace left in 2019, on October 11 in Vanoi, was that of a dead calf. The long hibernation in the rocky forests of Val Cadamientos in the Lagorai chain followed. In March of this year, defying low temperatures and snow up to half a meter high, the M49 bear had once again shown signs of life in the forests of Castello Molina di Fiemme. The ‘walking’ skills on the M49 have never been lacking, even at twenty kilos more. Subsequently, the plantigrade undertook a ‘journey’ to Alto Adige, in the direction of Malga Cugola sui Oclini, an area that it had already ‘visited’ last summer. In April, in the midst of a health emergency due to Covid-19, the first ‘raids’ that had led him to destroy the windows of a mountain refuge over the town of Brusago on the Pinè plateau, also in Trentino. The M49 bear had never given the impression of being afraid of entering inhabited areas: at the end of April it managed to cross the always busy Brenner motorway until it reached Giudicarie, in the western part of Trentino.
On the afternoon of April 28, the end of the 28-day inaction up and down the mountains of Trentino Alto Adige. Locked up inside the Casteller, the bear M49-Papillon on the night of July 27, after a 90-day stay in a corral, the second escape and escape in the forests of Marzola over the city of Trento. A few weeks ago the discovery of the radio collar in the forests of the upstream area of Malga Val Ciotto. Today the announcement of the new capture, the third in almost 14 months. Meanwhile, the issue of the bear in Trentino – there are currently about 95 copies – has landed on the table of Minister Costa.
Follow LaZampa.it on Facebook (click here), Twitter (click here) and Instagram (click here)
[ad_2]
