Godspeed Bruno: Brown Bear Meets a Tragic End

[Kellanved]

The brazen bear who captured the heart of the nation is no longer. Hunters shot Bruno dead in the early hours of Monday morning after efforts to capture the brown bear alive failed. He was the first wild bear to visit Bavaria in 170 years.

Bruno the wandering bear is dead. The notorious creature was shot by hunters at 4.50 a.m. on Monday morning, near the Bavarian town of Zell in southern Germany. "The shooting has happened, the bear is dead," said Manfred Wölfl, the Bavarian government's bear expert.

After weeks of attempts to capture the increasingly cheeky bear alive, Monday was the first day that hunters had been given permission to shoot the animal. The Bavarian environment ministry had given the green light for him to be shot due to the "grave danger to people" that he posed. This was after a much-heralded team of Finnish trackers and their specially trained dogs had frustratingly failed to find the bear.


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The Social Democrat party in Bavaria has been sharply critical of the bear's shooting -- even going as far as to call for the resignation of Werner Schappauf, the sate's Minister for the Environment. Sigmar Gabriel, the Federal Environment Minister, said that he understood that the measure had to be taken but he wasn't sure why it hadn't been possible to tranquilize Bruno. However, the Bavarian authorities said that to do so would have required that a vet be able to get within 30 and 45 meters of the bear and this was impossible in this terrain.
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On Monday, dozens of people began paying their respects to Bruno on a German Web site that has set up a condolences blog. Bruno's body is to be given an autopsy to determine his health, body mass and weight, and his genetic identity. His body will then be exhibited at a natural history museum in Munich's Nymphenburg Palace. The museum already shows a brown bear that was shot in Bavaria 170 years ago.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,423629,00.html