Bear sighted in Bavaria, first time in 170 years

Pikey halting sites for example.

@Uncle Nick

Yes, obviously, I'm sick of having to avoid semiflattened hedgehog guts when I'm out on my motorbike. Burn them all I say.

I'm referring to one specific case, with one specific bear in a relatively small area with a high density of bear food (and that could be you or me if push came to shove).

So far the bear has just had a few sheep! Or are all bears raving monsters that go round massacring people, which is why they had to be got rid of in the first place?

Ah but he didn't just have a few sheep. He killed em and left em. For fun.

The problem was not having a bear in the Bavarian Alps. The problem was that this particular bear had shown dangerous/unacceptable behaviour, killing sheep just for kicks and not avoiding human areas. The wild bears that are tolerated in Austria, Italy or Slovenia stay in the woods and avoid contact with humans. That's fine, but this was a different case.

Also, they tried long/hard enough to trap/catch him but failed repeatedly, which is why at some point the order to shoot him had to come.

Naughty bear!

Maybe we ought to kill cats next for killing birds and small animals just for fun!

foxes do that as well. they banned fox hunting in the UK. At least with dogs anyway. MAybe foxes just have better PR.

This particular bear was still trying to establish it's own territory and create a hunting pattern. Hence the departure from the normal sequence of events such as returning to a kill during the following days. The bear also cleaned out a rabbit hutch attached to a farmhouse.

Of course this being Germany every tourist or local wandering through the are where the bear could turn could just have been fitted with a large yellow "Ich bin nicht Bärenfutter" sign and then everything would have been okay. Of course the sign would have to have been translated as nobody is sure how much German the bear actually managed to pick up while he was passing through. The signs would of course be in washable recyclable plastic and could be rented on a daliy basis.

Or do you have a more workable solution, taking into acount the number of people wandering around in the Alps on any given day ?

Edit: the bear probably wasn't killing for kicks, he just did not have enough experience to know how much prey was enough, or how to react in a kill situation.

Cats and foxes are somewhat less likely to kill humans just for fun.

Not saying this is my argument, but it's the line taken by those who decided to shoot first and interrogate the bear after.

I recall reading that he did eat the livers and left the rest.

with a nice bottle of Chianti.

He would have alienated the German vintners with that.

Did anyone talk to the bear about this:

How does it feel to be a bear?
Do you often go hunting for people?
Should we be scared of you?
How often have you attacked people?

etc. etc.

As far as I recall this bear didn´t attack anbody, and bears usualy shy away from people!

This bear didn't, he had a kip in the yard of the police station in Kochel Am See, and it wasn't even during the Oktoberfest ? How the hell was he supposed to integrate into Bavaria ? The next thing you know he was going to be flashing his arse at traffic wardens and crossing when the lights were red.

I bet he hadn't been to the KVR to register and that's why the bloody police shot him

Well if this bear had attacked a person, it would have been too late, no? Yes they typically avoid humans but this one didn't. Hence the decision to shoot him, after numerous attempts to capture him had failed. Correct decision, imho.

I´m still laughing at the image of a bear flashing it´s arse at a traffic warden, would he/she give it a ticket?

From ananova

@oli2000: OK let´s kill every wild animal that gets within 50 yards of us and fence off the entire area and place land mines around all the farms with warning signs in "bearish": tresspassers will be shot immediately on sight!

Tells you all you want to know about German entrepreneurs.

Oh get over yourself. You know that's not what it's about. You know exactly why the bear was shot. If you didn't before then it has been made perfectly clear within this thread. Sure it's sad that they had to shoot him, but that's what happened and unless every hunter around had been issued with tranquiliser darts there's not much else they could have done.

Yeah 50 yards is stupid, push the killzone back to 100 yards and fire up the grill.

Issuing hunters with tranquilier darts wouldn't have done any good anyway, the darts have to be fired from a specialised rifle by a somebody trained to use it. The bear has to examined quickly, secured and his condition stabilised in case the dosage was too high. If the dosage is way too high the bear dies, if the dosage is too low you just annoy him and give him a temporary high so he comes back looking for another hit, or he wakes up while the hunters are checking him out and starts complaining about the quality of the columbian marching powder you just shot him in the arse with.

That phrase "bear with a sore head" didin't come from nowhere.

@Oli2000: Do the bears in USA and Canada all get shot when they are in the immediate vecinity of people?

@UN, yes this argument has been going in circles since the beginning. You are refusing to understand.

The debate lies in whether it was right to kill the bear as opposed to getting rid of him another way. The fact that the bear had to be removed is not under question.

Yes they do.

@Uncle Nick
You're doing it on purpose, aren't you? Missing the point...

You're mixing up "refusing to understand" with "refusing to agree". He knows damn well what happened and why, he's just being obstinate for the sake of it. That's my read anyway.

With all this bear-posting I´m slowly climbing up the top 10 posters list!

I bet those hunters overcooked him as well. Germans always overcook their meat.

And the entrepeneur is stupid. Anybody in the printing industry knows you have a 2-3 week leadtime on printing larger quantities of T-Shirts. And probably even longer now the world cup is on

Imagine a version of "Trainspotting" in the Bavarian Alps with loads of agressive violent bears on smack and crack robbing each others caves and talking in dodgy Leith accents!

@Monkstown:

alas, it was clear the only place for bruno is lying flat before an open fireplace.

In ammends schnappauf needs to reinstall two well behaved bears which have been properly registered with the KVR.

As in the BR chronicle "bavaria just wasn't ready for him"

Anyone want to chip in for an obituary in the Suddeutsche?

that'd cause a stir.

ag

Schnappauf is a See You Next Tuesday of the highest order and has managed to appear soft enough to allow a "compromise" while keeping his word to his kancker-farmer mates to get Bruno bumped off.

RIP Bruno.

Really? Everytime I've gone camping in the US (mostly Tahoe), you get warned about bears and what to do if you confront one, but as far as I know they are protected by the state since the area is protected.. if you get attacked, you get attacked.

People have been phoning and emailing murder threats to the Bavarian Hunters Association today. I think the correct description for anybody doing that is "thick as shit and harder to educate" but I'm open to correction on that.

The experts that have been advising the Environment ministry have said that bears exhibiting normal behaviour would not present the problems that JJ1 did and would not have to be hunted.

No there's a difference between bears living in the mountains and bears living amoung civilisation. If the bears stay in the mountains (which most bears do) then there is absolutely no issue and you are expected to treat the bears and their territory with respect. But if the bears start displaying behaviours like Bruno, for example living too close to centres of population and losing their fear of humans, then the bear is deemed a threat. There have been similar issues in Canada where bears had to be removed because they were coming too close to areas where people live.

The difference between North America and here is that in NA there is a lot more space for the bear and human to coexist without crossing paths too often. Here pockets of people live all over the alps so there really isn't any place where a bear can live without endangering humans and livestock.

It might not have been so bad if it had been just an anonymous bear, but once they started calling him Bruno and turned him into a media star, somehow that makes his death tragic.

Still, if I lived in Kochel am See, I think I'd be breathing a great sigh of relief now.

If that entrepeneur were smart, he'd make "Bruno RIP" t-shirts. He'd make a killing. I could see every other Uni kid at LMU with sporting such a T.

Just print a big red cross over the message.

I think Kaufhof has already latched on to the idea. I was in Kaufhof at Stachus on Saturday, and on the ground floor, near the handbags and luggage section, they have two almost life-size cuddly brown bears for sale at EUR 1999 each. Somehow, I don't think that's a coincidence.

You mean they could have saved the €30,000 that the Finns cost ?

They're probably negotiating now to buy Bruno's cadaver, and have it stuffed and put on display.

Naw, it's going to the Jagd museum.

Here is an excellent article on Bruno's misfortunes.

I find it a great shame that Bruno was killed, in my opinion un-necessarily.
However, I have just found out that if caught, he was destined for the Wild Park in Poing.

Hmmmmm, the thought of being confined to Poing for the rest of ones life ... Not a great prospect!

Sounds like the writer of that article should give over the tree hugging and the crack piping. Granted some of it is well written and some good points are made but it's all a bit Hollywood. Bruno makes his last stand for freedom, The Batriot, coming to an environmentally friendly cinema near you.

Well Mehmet was well happy last night. He has a Kebab shop down the road and took a huge delivery of meat in yesterday. Selling Bruno Burgers fpr 3 Euros a pop and they were selling faster than a bullet out of a hunter's rifle

As co-president of the Brown (University) Club of Munich, I would like to express the sorrow of all Brunonians upon the death of Bruno, a magnificent brown bear. If there are any Brown graduates out there who have not yet let us know they are in town, this would be a good time to get in touch.

2006 will always be remembered as the Year of the Bear.

With best wishes,

Dr. Marlena Corcoran

That will very much depend on the result of the World Cup.