Rest in peace, Bruno. Germany is in mourning after hunters shot dead the young brown bear who had outwitted pursuers in a seven-week odyssey round the Alps, during which he killed dozens of sheep and rabbits, stole honey, strolled nonchalantly through mountain villages and squashed a guinea-pig.

Who fired the fatal shots remains a mystery. The decision to kill Bruno was so unpopular that the Bavarian authorities received anonymous death threats against the hunters and are refusing to identify them.

A short statement from the environment ministry merely said that “persons with hunting skills” shot Bruno at 4.50am yesterday in a field about 200 metres (660ft) from the Rotwandhaus mountain lodge, in the Alps near Lake Spitzingsee.

Vets are conducting a post-mortem examination of the two-year-old bear, which will then be stuffed and displayed in a Munich museum as the first one to venture into Germany in 170 years. Brown bears have been reintroduced into the Austrian and Italian Alps in recent decades and there are about 30 in Austria alone.

They are. however, much more shy of humans than Bruno, who gained international fame for his forays into villages and farms. Local entrepreneurs printed T-shirts bearing the legends “You’ll Never Get Me” and “Bruno World Tour 2006”. An online betting agency took bets on whether he would be caught before Germany were knocked out of the World Cup.

Bruno sealed his fate when he scared guests at the Rotwandhaus lodge on Sunday night. “I told the guests to stay indoors. Then I went out and shouted at the bear,” Peter Weihrer, the manager, said. “I had the feeling he was afraid of us.” Bruno ran off and Herr Weihrer contacted the police.

Environmental groups said the killing was unnecessary and that the Government did not try hard enough to catch him alive. Manfred Fleischer, president of the Bavarian chapter of Germany’s animal protection league, said: “It’s a big shame. If they’d really wanted to, they could have tranquilised him safely. There was too much hysteria and the authorities lacked a proper plan to deal with him. Bruno was never aggressive when he came into contact with people.”

Locals agree that he should not have been killed. “He didn’t pose a danger,” said Hans Seebald, owner of the Grauer Bär (Grey Bear) Hotel in the Bavarian village of Kochel, where Bruno was spotted sitting in front of the police station a week ago. “The population didn’t mind the bear. It’s a shame. They could have found some other way of catching him.”

Bruno is believed to have strolled over from the Trentino region of Italy, where his mother had been fed by humans and so had not taught him to avoid contact with people. That lack of shyness prompted him to seek food in farms and villages as he strolled northwards.

“It’s deeply regrettable but there was no alternative given the danger he posed to the local population,” said Otmar Bernhard, state secretary in the Bavarian environment ministry. “It is possible to have bears settle here and we want them to come but in this densely populated area they have to be shy enough to avoid humans.”

It was Bruno’s bad luck that Bavaria and the neighbouring Austrian region of Tyrol had only just reinstated their permission for local hunters to shoot him dead from yesterday, after giving him a two-week reprieve to allow a Finnish team of bear trackers with sniffer dogs and tranquiliser guns to try to catch him alive. The Finns failed and left at the weekend.

Anton Steixner, head of agricultural affairs in Tyrol, said: “We knew it was an unpopular decision and there would be massive criticism.

“The bear deserves protection, but so do people living in this region. We did all we could to catch him alive.”

IN MEMORIAM

Why can’t people just live with bears like in other countries? In Italy and Austria there's no problem with bears. I am sad — poor Bruno!

Renmaus

So long Bruno, rest in peace. We will miss you and how you tricked those special bear-searching dogs from Finland. Hope you have it better now wherever you are!

Christian, Mazedlx.net

Not since 1835 have wild bears roamed the German lands. By acting like a bear, the bear was deemed an environmental threat, then hunted and killed.



Burton Front

I think everyone feels the loss, especially news editors.



Radio Free Mike

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