Wayward bear has Bavarians in an uproar

BERLIN – At first, people in Bavaria thought it was cute when they discovered Bruno, a two-year-old with a sweet tooth who had run away from his mother.

Bruno, a brown-haired bruin, became the first wild bear sighted in Germany in 170 years last month when he scampered across the Alps from his home in Italy. In mountainous Bavaria, where Germans love to commune with nature, Bruno became an instant celebrity.

Then he started acting like a bear. He knocked over farmers’ beehives and stole the honey. He showed a taste for blood, feasting on sheep and chickens and pet bunny rabbits.

The authorities responded swiftly and without mercy. Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber declared Bruno a “problem bear” and gave hunters permission to shoot to kill. With Bruno showing little discretion – unlike bears elsewhere, he wandered around in broad daylight and was spotted frequently by hikers – it looked like his days were numbered.

But it turns out that Bruno has a pretty tough hide. On Wednesday night, he survived a collision with a car just north of the Austrian border. He’s also outrun a pack of Finnish hunting dogs imported by Bavarian officials and displayed the good sense to avoid stepping in bear traps imported from the United States.

Bruno’s durability, as well as an outpouring of public sympathy, has prompted Bavarian leaders to soften their stance toward the ursine intruder. Now they say they want to capture him and put him in a local animal park, where he can’t hurt livestock or people.

“The animal has to be taken out of circulation,” Werner Schnappauf, the Bavarian environment minister, told reporters. “It cannot be allowed to roam freely.”

Others say Bruno deserves to keep his freedom. If Bruno is caught, the Bavarian Animal Protection Federation has offered to pay to ship him back to Italy and tag him with a radio transmitter in case he gets the urge to wander away from home again.

“I think he’s just here looking for a companion, and that’s normal,” said Manfred Fleischer, president of the federation. “Don’t put him in a zoo. He was born in the wilderness and he should stay there.”

Bears are common figures in German folklore and once roamed many parts of the country. But 170 years ago, the last of them fell to hunters who were deliberately eradicating the animals as pests and threats to the human population.

Bears have been making a slow but steady comeback in the Alps in recent years. In 1972, one wandered into Austria from Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia. With the help of conservationists, the Austrian bear population has grown to two or three dozen.

Bruno comes from a family that wildlife experts resettled in northern Italy about a decade ago. He himself is Italian-born.

Unlike Austria and Italy, Germany has no programs in place to compensate farmers and was taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of a bear. That has led to a debate over who represents the bigger threat to whom: Bruno to Bavaria, or vice versa.

“Bavaria is not prepared to become bear country again right now,” Fleischer said in a telephone interview. “Bruno is the first bear to come back to Bavaria, but there will be a second and a third one for sure.”