Italy: Fatal Attack by Brown Bear, Threat of Expanding Bear Populations Worldwide

U.S.A. – In Italy, Andrea Papi, a young man running for exercise, was killed by an aggressive European brown bear. European brown bears are essentially the same species as American grizzly/brown bears. From Nature World News:

Fear and rage spread throughout the area after Andrea Papi was fatally attacked by the aggressive bear while jogging above the town of Caldes in the Brenta Dolomites on the slopes of Mt. Peller. Papi is the first Italian reported to have died in the last few years at the hands of a bear.

In Italy, bears are a protected species, and since they were reintroduced to the area two decades ago, their population has been growing recently.

(snip)

JJ4’s biological parents had been transported from Slovenia to northern Italy as part of the “Life Ursus” European conservation project. On Mount Peller in 2020, it had already attacked and hurt a father and son who were hiking.

For most of the history of homo sapiens, bears have been known to be dangerous. There are accounts of problems with bears in the Old Testament. Bears, especially brown/grizzly bears, have been a danger to humans and their food supplies in Eurasia throughout recorded history. The Eurasian brown/grizzly bears are a relatively recent immigrant to North America south of Canada, appearing somewhat after early human immigrants to the same area about 15,000 – 16,000 years ago.

Only recently have bears been considered harmless or necessary.

As humans developed more effective agriculture and came to dominate the land, bears were driven away from human population centers. The hunting team of humans armed with stand-off weapons, such as spears and bows, with the tracking and holding ability of dogs, is a combination bears find difficult to overcome. The productivity of agriculture allowed a sufficient population density of humans to eliminate the danger of bears from an area.

Wild bears were eliminated from England during the medieval period. In the rest of Europe west of the Ural mountains, they persisted only in areas remote from human population centers. With the advent of cartridge firearms, a single human became effectively able to defend against European brown bears. The European brown bears became reclusive and wary of human contact.  The bears who were not reclusive and wary did not survive. By the end of the 20th Century, European brown bears were reduced to a few hundred in remote mountain areas in Western Europe and a few thousand in forest reserves in Eastern Europe. Intense hunting pressure had been reserved for wary, reclusive brown bears.  Attacks by bears on humans, or even human food sources, became nearly non-existent in Western Europe.

Prosperity and safety have brought about the complacency and the myth of the harmless bear.

Bored urban Europeans and Americans who chaffed at the sexual restrictions of Judeo/Christian morality restarted pagan worship of the Earth as goddess Gaia.  Near worship of wild animals followed. With this worship came the movement to return dangerous large predators to areas from which they had been eliminated at significant cost and effort. Some support the movement out of a desire to destroy Western civilization. Many students of history and human nature warned a price would be paid in blood and treasure. Fatal bear attacks are on the rise around the world.

Andre Papi has paid part of that price. The father and son, attacked in 2020, also paid in blood, pain, treasure, and time. Wild animal worshipers are willing to sacrifice as many Andre Papis as it takes for the public to demand the removal of the danger among them.

In the United States, humans who venture where there are large, wild predators are able to legally arm themselves. The right to defend against animal attack is part of the right to keep and carry arms in defense of self and community, so dearly fought for and paid with Revolutionary and Civil War blood and treasure.

Western Europeans are re-learning the lessons of the dangers of wild brown/grizzly bears among them. Those dangers were well-known in Roman and medieval Europe.  If bears are aggressively hunted, the bears learn, or are selected, to be wary of humans.  When bears are wary of humans, bear/human conflict, and the threat of bear attack is minimized.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.