A controversy, according to the definition given by Treccani, is a “rather lively controversy, sustained mostly through a series of articles or other writings between people who have different views”. To define controversy the press release with which the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise has taken a position on the case of a citizen who fed the two Marsican bears, sons of Amarena, therefore, it is senseless: the park authority explains in fact what scientific evidence led it to avoid intervening with “supportive feeding” in favor of the two specimens. Yet Ansa, the country’s main news agency, titled its launch this way: “He gave food to the two orphans of the Amarena bear, it’s controversial”.
The Park has chosen to intervene (we are in May 2024, the press release sent is just the second of the year, the first is the one relating to the emergence from hibernation of the two young specimens less than a year old, whose mother was killed in shot at the end of August 2023) to respond to the results of research carried out over the last 7 years after a private citizen claimed to have provided food during the month of December 2023 to the orphaned bears, a decision taken “in total autonomy” without any confirmation “that this was necessary”.
The park authority starts from a “scientific, rigorous and prudential approach to the negative effects that this practice could produce”highlighted in most studies on the subject and practices: “A year and a half of activity (1985-86), especially in periods of hyperphagia (when the sensation of hunger or appetite increases, ed.) served to demonstrate that the supplementary feeding points were frequented mainly by deer, wild boars and foxes, where there was fruit, and above all by wolves, but also by wild boars, where there was meat. The bears took advantage of this additional food a few times and sporadically.”
The Park also disputes the assertion that the bears are hungry: “how can we talk about food shortages if among all the bears we monitor or have captured, as well as all those subject to photos or videos that fill social media, there are none ‘Is he undernourished?’
“The food shortages, now insinuated in the minds of those who fear for the fate of the Marsican bear, do not currently exist, and there are very different problems for this wonderful population. But as often happens, the more macroscopic and even more complicated ones to solve are ignored” continues the Park.
Even the IUCN Guidelines for the reduction of conflicts with wildlife (IUCN SSC Guideline on human-wildlife conflict on 2023), when choosing a management measure, suggest that it is essential to avoid or minimize any negative side effects: “giving food to fauna is not mentioned among the suggested actions, precisely because the majority of studies define that the risks of habituation to food and to humans, as well as the loss of mistrust and the possibility of transmitting diseases, given that where puts food there, not only bears would go there, it actually increases conflicts” underlines the press release.
Confident bears exist all over the world and “associating the phenomenon of confiding bears with food shortages has no certain scientific basis” underlines the Park, which then jokes about the fact that if some are confiding and the majority are not, in the event of in the absence of food it would be difficult to understand what everyone else would live on around the central Apennines. “It’s not hunger that pushes some bears to periodically descend into anthropized areas, otherwise we would have dozens and dozens of bears in the villages. And this has never happened.” The famous invasion of bears in Abruzzoto paraphrase the title of Dino Buzzati’s book, is a novel that has never been written.
As also suggested by the book “Sottocorteccia”, written by Pietro Lacasella and Luigi Torreggiani and dedicated to bark beetles and spruces, in Nature everything is more complex than it seems. “From this point of view, we humans should make a more careful and rational reflection because it is often precisely our simplistic approach that makes us make wrong choices with respect to the environment, with implications that we don’t even imagine. And too often we ignore the ’cause and effect’ relationship ‘, because the period of time that passes before we perceive the consequences of our actions is very long” underlines the Park. This is why the actions implemented by those who decided to artificially feed Amarena’s two bear children are defined as “reckless” and “extremely serious”. It’s about “clandestine actions that have little to do with respect for the law, because the Marsican bear is a particularly protected speciesand on whose merit we have asked the competent authorities to clarify and which we will give an account of as soon as we have certain news” concludes the Park. The need to intervene also arises from the desire to reduce “the emulation effect that others could adopt in silence and in the shadows.”
