The killing of the bear Amarena: last call to become human again

We had seen her walking through the streets of the village of San Sebastiano, in Abruzzo. She had emerged from an alley to the admiration of the crowd and then she had stopped to wait for her two puppies, to then take the road that leads back to the woods. I had thought several things watching that video: that themarsican bear was really slender compared to other species, which the she-bear had evidently decided that people weren’t dangerous, looked at them (they were even too close to be anxious to take her back), and ignored them. In her life he had occasionally caught some head of cattle (which, as required by European law, had been compensated to the breeders), but there had never been the slightest trouble between her and the men.

I thought that Abruzzo – together with the director of the park, Luciano Sammaroneand to a President of the Region, Marcus Marsilius, who (unlike the president of the province of Trento Maurizio Fugatti) understands the privilege of having similar animals on his territory – he had managed to do something spectacular, to create a coexistence that worked between the human species and wildlife. With mayors from Abruzzo who had signed ordinances to protect Amarena and her puppies from tourists who were too intrusive, or happy that she was walking around the town. And it is like this, it is still like this, the Abruzzo Park remains an example, even if today the bitterness invests all of Italy. Last night, just after midnight, Amarena the bear was shot and killed by a man from the village of San Benedetto dei Marsi. The puppies are missing.

What does this fact mean? It means that a gentleman, “frightened”, he says, because the she-bear had eaten his chickens, instead of staying at home and calling the carabinieri, goes out into the courtyard at midnight and shoots a she-bear with her cubs.

Widening the gaze, it means what we are witnessing with ever greater force, and which has been preparing for years but which is exploding today without measure. It means that this era of unbridled individualism is definitively taking over the common good, society, laws, morals. The good, in this deviated society, is only what is good for the individual. Any single. An attitude that is all the more evident and serious when rivals are made against animals that do not have the possibility of defending themselves.

It was a tragic summer: we have seen children playing football with a curlywe saw one little goat approach to play and be beaten to death, dogs abandoned everywhere, even at the airport because leaving and going on vacation is more important than your most faithful friend. The human species above all, a detachment from nature, a delusion of omnipotence, a distortion of thought so serious that it is leading to think that man has a right over nature, to pollute, to kill entire ecosystems (including his own) , in deciding the infamous life of millions and millions of animals in intensive farms, in shooting a bear because a hen took from it. A capitalism of desire who wants you to have everything, chicken to eat for 1 euro, animals that wag their tails when you need them, and you can enter a park without having to encounter a bear by chance. A narcissistic model that is besieging our society in such a pervasive and so successful way that it can determine our end.

In the meantime, however, the end of the man who shot Amarena is linked to misery law that punishes such a serious act, even more in its gratuitousness, with imprisonment from 3 months to a year and a fine of 9,000 euros. Asking you to give it your all isn’t enough. Instead, asking that the law be changed by tightening the penalties is necessary, as well as let it be educated, invest in schools, in books, in courses, in morality, in a healthy and normal life to get back to thinking, get out of individualism, of the world that has to move as we want (probably to shoot a video to post), and we return to the reality of a community and a planet where we pass together with the other species.

I think of everything we’ve said about bears, which are protected and endangered animals, to the commitment of many in the culture of respect and protection which is swept away by the gesture and by the will of the individual. I think of the children who said “hello” to Amarena in the streets of the town of San Sebastiano when she went for a stroll two days ago. But what will they have to think today?