The death of a 26-year-old trail-running enthusiast—the first fatal bear attack in western Europe in modern times—has sparked fierce debate around a 25-year-old rewilding program.
of northern Italy, when there’s a wedding in the village, friends often paint the names of the happy couple on a bedsheet and hang it near the main road. A similar sheet currently hangs above the roundabout in the small town of Caldes, in the province of Trentino, but it features just one name:It’s been two weeks since the body of Andrea Papi was found in the forests near his hometown. The 26-year-old trail-running enthusiast was out training when he was attacked and killed by a bear.
“It could be a huge step backward, I fear,” says Claudio Groff, director of the Large Carnivores Division in Trentino’s Wildlife Department and one of the authors of the original feasibility report on which the LIFE Ursus projects were based. According to the surveys conducted over the course of the project, public opinion had already become less favorable toward the presence of bears, he said.
“If you look on Facebook and in the newspapers, there’s a really strong anti-bear reaction,” Pedrini says, “and there’s also an angry reaction from bear lovers and animal rights activists—people who don’t want any bears to be put down in any circumstances.” Neither, he believes, is helpful, and the danger is that both sides will turn against the experts who are best-placed to suggest solutions.
The province does invest significant sums in measures to prevent conflict. Every year, Claudio Groff’s Wildlife Department pays farmers in order to compensate for livestock deaths and damage to crops and beehives caused by the animals. In 2021, the most recent year for, they paid out €172,000 to cover 301 individual incidents. “We make sure we pay quickly. We try to pay everyone within two months,” Groff says. There are also grant schemes to fund guard dogs and electric fences.
The fact that Andrea’s Papi’s death has garnered so much sensationalist coverage in other regions of Italy and in neighboring countries could represent a setback for rewilding in the Alps and more widely, Salvatori believes. “There is for sure a bias in how it’s represented in the media,” he says. “People die for many reasons in the mountains, but this one has attracted so much attention.” Rewilding projects require a certain level of public buy-in to be successful.
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