In Trentino there are more and more incidents of sightings of bears walking through the streets of inhabited centers and sowing fear among the population
The sightings of bears in the streets of Trentino cities are becoming more and more numerous and the inhabitants are increasingly afraid. Now many are calling for more concrete action to resolve the situation. The bear population, in fact, continues to grow growth and up to now a solution for a peaceful coexistence does not seem to have been found.
The latest bear sightings in Trentino
The presence of bears in urban contexts in valleys of Trentino it is greater every day. In recent weeks, reports of bears walking through the streets of the city have multiplied, especially in the Val di Sole area. For example, on the night of Sunday 9 June in Bozzana, a hamlet of Caldes, a bear was spotted walking just outside a building that housed a polling station for the European elections. The scrutineers of the polling station have finished their service had to wait locked inside the building so that the animal would leave. There was great fear also because Caldes was the town of Andrea Papi, the 26-year-old runner killed in April 2023 by the Jj4 bear.
Another report occurred from the Mandrea district of municipality of Arco. Here a man while tending his vegetable garden saw the bear arriving in the area and immediately locked himself in his house. From there he then took a video of the animal and contacted the Forest Guard. These plantigrades seem to really like it the ripe fruit and, in fact, it seems that the bear had already come to the area to “steal some cherries”.
At the end of May, it seems that the same specimen was filmed by a camera trap while walking in the garden of a house. In this case the house is also located in Arco on the road towards San Giovanni where other similar episodes had already occurred. This time the large mammal seems to have only crossed the garden without having done any particular damage.
A last sighting of a bear in the city was reported on Sunday 16 June in Malè, also in the province of Trento. Here is a video posted on Facebook by the councilor Claudio Cia shows the bear around two in the morning a bear walking calmly through the streets of the center.
The statements of mayors and experts on the bear issue in Trentino
L’bear alert in Trentino, in addition to scaring the population, it is once again opening up debates and controversies on how the situation should be managed. There are many local administrators, and not only, who request the application of the provincial law it regulates the demolition of the most problematic specimens.
The province that took action with all the monitoring activities for many people it should do more. The Malè municipal administration shared a document on what happened in the city and the concerns. The text of communicated was taken up by ‘La Repubblica: “The event in Malé is already worsening the climate. It is necessary to begin serious management of the problem, with control of the number of animals and removal of problematic and confident specimens. The solutions adopted so far, such as anti-bear bins, prove to be simple palliatives. The Province can and must already intervene today with the legislative instruments in force.”
The concerns and hard line of the administrators are contrasted with the position of the animal rights associations according to which insufficient actions were taken to prevent the situation. For example, the so-called “anti-bear bins”, designed to resist attacks from a hungry bear, were introduced very late. Due to this the bears would have become accustomed to in the meantime look for food in city bins. Another problem that associations encounter is the lack of information and education: people still don’t know how to behave if they encounter a plantigrade.
