THE “GEM” BEAR: that is, how the problem of “problem bears” in Abruzzo can be solved with a shotgun! The bear "Gemma" (the abbreviation given to it by the researchers is unknown) has no longer been "problematic" for almost two months: a few gunshots were enough to solve the problem! It sounds like a paradox, but it's the truth. After trying them all to try to keep it away from countries and man, the "solvers", the new (?) Profession created to tackle the problem of "problem bears", practiced by experts and connoisseurs of the animal, since they managed to solve it last July and finally shot several shots at him… with rubber bullets, of course. This behind the pressure of the local community which had even launched a collection of signatures to push the authorities of the Abruzzo National Park to prevent his (by "Gemma") repeated forays into chicken coops, rabbit hutches and pigsties and even in the squares (and on the terraces!) of the town, which was also putting people's safety at risk. The fact is that since then the bear "Gemma" has disappeared from Scanno and its surroundings and seems to be roaming around other valleys of the Park, or else it has moved on its own, thus solving the problem; strangely with a behavior that had never worked before when the "problem" bears (a new phenomenon that NEVER occurred in Abruzzo: a mystery that has not yet been solved, or that no one has yet had the courage to reveal the reasons! ) were repeatedly captured and moved elsewhere by the authorities without ... asking them (the bears!) for permission (how can we forget the now historic "Yoga" bear, the first of these problematic bears, then ended, as was foreseeable and as someone had also foreseen, in the enclosure of Villavallelonga), which always returned to their places of origin. Obviously the shots from a rifle, we repeat, obviously with rubber bullets, have more effect than forced transfers!
A method, that of the shot, which can therefore soon be used (but who knows if we really have to wish it!) To solve the problem of the many other problematic bears that in a continuous crescendo from Ciociaria to Molise, to Sulmonese, to Marsica are pointing out the their presence near the villages and farms, where they can find that animal and vegetable food of anthropogenic origin to which they have always been accustomed; that food that they no longer find in the natural areas of the Park and their close vicinity due to the abandonment of agriculture and the reduction of pastoralism, the latter perhaps not really favored by the authorities.
Those human activities to which the bear for millennia connected the presence of appetizing and abundant food, and which today it is hoped the Park authorities will soon resume favoring with direct and public actions (the funds are there, and the promises are verbally reiterated) so that the crisis in the rural world for years no longer helped with contributions and adequate payment of compensation for lost income caused by the predatory actions of wolves and bears, the latter pushed to move further and further away from the protected area, can be overcome. due to the food competition with wild boars and the never really controlled excursion tourism.
In this regard, in these days it is about to be encouraged by over 70 volunteers who scattered in all the most delicate areas for the life of the bear (the ramneti, in particular) for yet another useless (or, at least, not indispensable) counting of live bears, ... so that, let's not hope so, they can then subtract that of dead bears! Because, dear President Carara, #we cannot be confident but the urgent measures that should be taken to bring the bear back to the mountains are quite different, instead of the usual, dated yet another censuses that are only the joy of scholars! With the hope that during this census at least the presence of some female with cubs of the year will be ascertained and, perhaps, that the bear "Gemma" is irrefutably seen again somewhere!
Frank Zunino
Secretary General of the Italian Wilderness Association
formerly the first scholar in the field of the Marsican Brown Bear
(26 August 2014)
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