beloved brown bear has been shot lifeless close to an Italian nationwide park, sparking outrage in Italy and leaving her two younger cubs motherless.

Italy’s surroundings minister and animal rights advocates voiced anger and dismay over the “unjustifiable” killing of the endangered bear within the mountainous Abruzzo area on Friday.

Local residents, together with households with babies, had typically stopped to observe the bear and her cubs throughout the animal household’s frequent night excursions by way of streets close to the park.

The National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise described the slain animal, nicknamed Amarena — or Black Cherry in Italian — as one in all its most prolific brown bears.

Residents coined the identify Amarena as a result of cherries and black cherries have been among the many bear’s favourite meals, based on the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

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The man who shot the bear with a rifle on Thursday night time within the city of San Benedetto dei Marsi informed police the animal was on his property and he felt at risk, the Italian news company ANSA mentioned.

Prosecutors have been wanting right into a doable cost of animal killing, and police took the rifle, which was legally owned by the 56-year-old man, as a part of their investigation, the LaPresse news company mentioned.

The marsican brown bear, endemic to central Italy, is taken into account at an elevated threat of extinction. The park says about 60 bears reside inside the park or in its surrounding areas.

In a publish on Facebook, the park mentioned vets tried to avoid wasting Amarena however she was pronounced lifeless on the scene.

“There is no reason to justify the incident since Amarena, despite causing damage to agricultural and zootechnical activities, always and in any case compensated by the Park even outside the borders of the Contigua Area, had never created any kind of problem for humans,” it added within the publish.

The head of World Wildlife Fund’s Italy workplace, Luciano Di Tizio, known as the bear’s slaying a “very grave, unjustifiable crime of nature” and the results of a “constant campaign against wildlife.”

“A self-assured, but completely peaceful bear, Amarena was part of the collective imagination and was the subject of pride in a land that has, in the bear, a symbol” of native nature, Mr Di Tizio mentioned.

Drones have been getting used within the seek for the cubs, LaPresse mentioned.

Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto mentioned: “The killing of a marsican female bear is a grave episode, on which it’s dutiful to shed light as quickly as possible.

“Our commitment is aimed also at the protection of the bear’s cubs, doing everything possible so that they can remain free,” he mentioned in an announcement.

The motherless cubs aren’t but self-sufficient and thus are at excessive threat, triggering the seek for them within the parklands, he added.

The theme of bear versus people has taken on political connotations in Italy and landed within the courts.

Earlier this 12 months, an administrative court docket’s ruling spared, for now, the lifetime of a brown bear that fatally attacked a runner on a mountain path in Italy’s Alpine area.

Local political authorities had issued an order to have the 17-year-old feminine bear, often known as Jj4, euthanised.

A court docket listening to on the bear’s destiny is predicted in December. Animal rights teams have challenged the order to place down the bear.

The brown marsican bear which was killed on Thursday is a subspecies that's genetically completely different from alpine bears.

Italian state TV mentioned Friday that Amarena was the mom of one other one of many park’s bears that met a violent finish. That bear, which was fatally struck by a automotive earlier this 12 months, earned nationwide fame when it broke right into a bakery and devoured cookies.