The Trento Regional Administrative Court declared the appeal inadmissible Work: The Province of Trento is not obliged to respond to requests to initiate the transfer of the JJ4 bear. The association’s efforts to erode the wall of silence erected by the administration led by Maurizio Fugatti proved futile.
JJ4 will continue to remain in the enclosure Casteller Wildlife Centeron the outskirts of Trento and the province will not have to respond to Lav’s plans to make a move to Bear Liberty Reserve from Zarnesti in Romania.
In the decision, the judges said there was no formal duty requiring the province to respond to Lava. In the future, the autonomous province will be able to continue to examine the Lav proposal and express its opinion, but without any pressure from the association and the administrative judiciary.
“It goes o.a unacceptable decision – declared Lav – a gratuitous and unbearable cruelty that will force the bear to remain locked up in the Casteller enclosure, while the refuge in Romania can offer her much better living conditions”.
The total area of Casteller is approximately 8,000 square meters and, as the province itself admitted, «it is a structure built on temporary admission bear specimens and not for permanent captivity, intended for the recovery of injured animals, for example after traffic accidents”. However, JJ4 has been inside since April last year when she was caught in a pipe trap while she was with her two cubs.
Since then, no trace of the puppies has been lost: the Province announced that they were old enough to hope to survive without their mother. On the other hand, JJ4 will find itself within a limited distance from butterfly. The two bears have no contact and each has a den available, insufficient space for this species, which is used to covering a much larger area than Casteller had available.
JJ4 cannot return to the wild after killing a 26-year-old man Andrea Papiova, Ispra actually expressed a positive stance on being taken out of her natural context without necessarily resorting to cruel methods, opening up the possibility of moving her to a place where she cannot have contact with humans. For this reason, the associations designed the Sanctuary in Romania, one of the few structures in Europe that can host plantigrades.
The Romanian authority and the Italian Ministry of the Environment have already agreed to the transfer hypothesis, with the latter also creating a commission of experts to evaluate possible destinations from an animal welfare point of view. All useless without a reaction from the Trentino administration.
“The Province of Trento continues to spend a lot of money on lawyers and on the care of the bear, just to satisfy its absurd thirst for Fugatti’s Revengewe immediately turn to the State Council to finally ask for an end to the absurd situation, which brings no benefits to anyone and which forces the bear to endure serious suffering, completely contrary to the dictates of our constitution – concludes Lav – in fact, we remember that the State Council has already expressed his opinion in favor of starting the transfer procedures JJ4 also citing the “loyal cooperation” of the Province of Trento towards Lav”.
However, the councilor was satisfied with the responsibility for forests and hunting, Roberto Failoni: «The province is called upon to take decisions that take into account the public interest. The European Court of Justice will decide on the energy measure to be taken, i.e. permanent capture or culling (considered by the province to be equivalent for the purposes of species protection), and it is therefore necessary to wait for the judge’s opinion on the essence of the problem, defining the correct interpretation of the Habitats Directive”.
There is therefore only one solution for the province of Trento: demolition.