The mauling death of a jogger in the Italian Alps has sparked a furious debate about the relationship between humans and nature. Environmentalists are squaring off against right-wing politicians, neighbor against neighbor. At the heart of the controversy is Gaia the bear*:
Papi’s death sparked fury in the local area. Maini, the mayor of Caldes, started to receive hand-scrawled notes and Facebook messages, some of them threatening, demanding to know why he hadn’t protected his constituents. A pupil at his six-year-old daughter’s school told her that her father was a murderer.
People put up signs all over the village: “Justice and Dignity for Andrea.” Fugatti, the right-wing politician, turned up the heat, saying that Papi would still be alive if he had been allowed to kill Gaia in 2020.
Outside Trentino animal-rights activists were mobilizing to prevent Gaia from being killed. They launched an appeal in Rome, and a court agreed that the bear’s death sentence should be commuted to confinement. Campaigners proposed she be relocated to a sanctuary in Romania. Legal wranglings over Gaia’s fate are still unfolding slowly between courts in Trento and Rome.
Throughout the process, animal-rights activists have been protesting outside Fugatti’s house (“Fugatti, we are all JJ4!” read one placard). Declaring themselves “anti-speciesism and anti-fascism”, Gaia’s supporters have also protested in Milan and Rome. They wrote to Maini too. (“You wanted the bears, now protect them.”)
“They all live on an ideal mountain,” Maini told me recently. “We have to live on a real one.” His village has been besieged by journalists from around the world, and the furor has caused him a great deal of stress. At one point his resting heart rate went up to around 200 beats per minute.
*This story is behind a paywall.
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