The death of the bear Juan Carrito, a tragedy foretold

Yesterday was a sad day for Italian and European nature: Juan Carritothe young Marsican bear famous on media and social media for his confident behavior, died run over in the late afternoon, along the SS17 near Castel di Sangro, a road sadly known for having already caused the death of a female bear in 2019 .

The young man driving the vehicle and his girlfriend were fortunately uninjured in the impact. Shortly after the accident, the park rangers, the veterinary service and the Carabinieri Forestali intervened on the spot. The animal, which died shortly after the arrival of help, was transported to the Zooprophylactic Institute for necropsy.

National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, WWF Italy and Salviamo l’Orso have recently committed themselves, with a significant economic investment, to the construction of a fence along the section of the SS17 considered most dangerous for wildlife. The intervention, carried out in recent weeks, saw the assembly of a fixed metal fence on both sides of the roadway in a 600 m stretch (from km 146.6 to km 147.2). The fencing also aims to “direct” the animals towards an adjacent underpass, thus mitigating the risk of accidents and increasing the safety of bears and motorists.

But evidently this was not enough.

Juan Carrito’s story has a lot to teach us. His confidence and problems have shown us how important it is to prevent such phenomena, through the adoption of correct behavior for individual citizens and correct land management measures by the institutions responsible for the correct management of food resources of human origin, which is the basis of the onset of such behaviors. And his death underlines even more how necessary structural interventions are on roads, highways and railways to secure the residual population of the Marsican brown bear, too often the victim of investments.

In a large part of our Apennines, the roads cross natural areas rich in biodiversity. Living in an area where Nature is predominant, considering that that same wealth is used in slogans to attract tourist flows, should oblige us to invest in its preservation. Too often, however, there is a lack of policies (local, regional and national) that provide for concrete actions to mitigate our impact on the precious and unique biodiversity that surrounds us.

The associations (WWF Italia and Salviamo l’Orso) and the protected areas (Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park and Maiella National Park) invest huge resources (economic and human) and energies in interventions aimed at improving the coexistence between humans and bear, to mitigate the impact of our activities on the survival of the bear, to ensure a future for this population.

But this is not enough: every year an average of two Marsican brown bears die of accidental or illegal human causes. And Juan Carrito is the latest sad case that reminds us that a real gear change is needed to conserve Europe’s rarest bear. By all the actors involved, inside and above all outside the protected natural areas. This is the last warning that the troubled story of this young bear has given us. Now the declarations of those representatives of the institutions who today mourn the death of Juan Carrito, but who until yesterday acted to cut protected natural areas or to continue planning invasive interventions in the bear’s range, sound a bit false. The time has truly come to hypothesize and implement sustainable development for the central Apennines through the conservation of its extraordinary biodiversity.