AND on the evening of the last day of August, it is 23.00 when a shot, just one, breaks out in the silence of a small town a few kilometers from Abruzzo National Park. A gunshot followed by his scream of pain a mother bear named Amarena, has just been brutally killed by a local farmer. The story of the case quickly spread across Europe, attracting the attention of animal rights activists and people who were shocked by the incident.
Amarena the bear and her two cubs under 6 months had become his little starsAbruzzo: they often roamed the streets of some towns in the area, including the one where I spent all my summers as a child and where the poor bear, shamefully, died on the night of August 31, 2023. Her name, Amarena, was given to her precisely because of greed her for the cherries. It was the most productive bear in the Park which today numbers about fifty specimens.
He came down from the mountain mainly to drink and prepare for the winter cold.
In time he had learned that man could be his friend and was not to be feared
With her puppies she has been depicted several times surrounded by onlookers. That night, however, something went differently and a witness told La Repubblica newspaper: “I saw her at the entrance to the city at 10.15pm and called the police. She got scared and I let her cross the road, with the two puppies still behind her. She walked into a private garden and I heard the owners leave the house and get into the car: they started honking and shot their high beams in her face. He was approaching their henhouse.”
In this way the bear was removed, but shortly afterwards it entered the property of the Leombrunis brothers who are engaged in “meat processing”, producing salami and porcetta.
At this point in the story the unexpected happens: a rifle is loaded, the target is taken, and fire is opened. Not to heaven but to Amarena. Immediately after the cold shot the bear is on the ground, tries to get up but its limbs give way and it falls again. He crawls to the gate of the property with a bullet in his abdomen that has caused irreversible injuries and remains there in agony until he passes out.
The puppies take refuge in a tree for hours and then try to follow the path they had taken with their mother. Today they are wanted by men and drones. They cannot survive on their own
Today, all we can do is hope that justice will take its course, according to Ansa: “The prosecutor’s office of Avezzano, prosecutor Maurizio Maria Cerrato, opened a case against the fifty-six-year-old who killed the Amarena bear last night with a rifle. shootings, for the crime 544bis of the penal code, that is, whoever cruelly or needlessly causes the death of animals: the man risks from 4 months to 2 years in prison.”
Apart from the inhumane act that comes with the huge loss of the National Park, what has happened results from the very close contact of man and wild animals: in fact, we should never come into contact with the latter.
Unfortunately, this continues to happen all over the world and there are even holiday packages that include photos and hugs with lions, monkeys and elephants.
Petting them, however, does them no good! The reason? These animals begin to see us as friends and when confronted by a hunter they will believe him to be good and will not run away from him. In addition, the puppies, when stroked by our hands, will change their smell and stop nursing from their mothers.
Finally, we have to think about the problem of zoonoses, that is, diseases that animals transmit to us and against which we do not always have the appropriate defenses.
Federica Gasbarro works with The Wom independently and is in no way associated with the advertisements that may appear in this content.