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Bear Faces Shoot To Kill Order

Fears Grow For Bruno as Hunters Polish Their Guns

Public admiration for Bruno's success in outwitting his pursuers is fast giving way to fears for his safety as Alpine authorities, alarmed at his increasingly brazen forays into villages, are about to allow local hunters to shoot him dead on sight.

Bruno may have just a few days left. Two of the five Finnish bear trackers who have been hunting him with tranquilizer guns for the last two weeks have agreed to stay on until Monday. The others have already left after a fruitless and arduous search for the predator through the barren, tough terrain of the high Alps.

The Bavarian government, aware of growing public support for Bruno and under pressure from the World Wildlife Fund to catch him alive, had suspended its permission for hunters to kill the bear for the two weeks while the Finnish trackers worked.

But the stay of execution is coming to an end. "We expect that the permission to open fire on him will be reinstated," said Sandra Brandt, spokeswoman for the Bavarian Environment Ministry. "We can't allow any interruption in the search for him. He's posing a growing risk because he's learned that he can get food where people live and he's getting closer to people all the time."

"He's strolling straight into towns and villages. He hasn't been behaving aggressively but if he meets a person and feels cornered he may push them aside with a paw. Since he weighs over 100 kilos that wouldn't be good for anyone's health."

It's not an easy decision to take. "It would bleed the hunters' hearts to have to shoot the bear dead," ministry spokesman Roland Eichhorn told reporters. The government will step up the search for Bruno this weekend by deploying a helicopter equipped with a thermal imaging camera for the first time. Until now, all such cameras had been in use for the security effort during the World Cup.

The Finns got close several times, helped by sniffer dogs equipped with satellite tracking devices, but never near enough to fire a dart at Bruno's backside. The heat was also a problem for the furry Scandinavian dogs because it made their noses dry up and caused the scent to evaporate quickly. Bruno also covered his tracks with frequent baths in Alpine lakes and a tendency to wander into narrow valleys were the hunters lost radio contact with their dogs.

Close encounters

There have been some close encounters with the local population. Last Friday night in the Bavarian village of Kochel, Bruno walked down a street and encountered a man walking his dog. The man immediately turned off the street and walked around a building to avoid him but again came face to face with Bruno who had obviously had the same idea.

No one has been injured although he has killed dozens of sheep -- often only eating the heart and lungs -- as well as rabbits and chickens. He squashed a 12-year-old girl's pet guinea pig and has a knack for finding beehives which he overturns to get at the honey.

Bruno even sat on the steps of Kochel's police station, a move which won him more fans and prompted media commentators to poke fun at the Finnish hunters panting their way through the mountains looking for him.

He's obviously a nuisance to local sheep owners who want him caught as quickly as possible. Hiking in the Alps is probably a less relaxing experience than it was before Bruno started hitting the headlines with his sheep-killing in mid-May. And walking your dog in villages like Kochel these days may be positively nerve-wracking.

But for the rest of Germany, the first bear to be seen in the Bavarian Alps in 170 years is a star, and he has attained international fame too. Foreign correspondents of leading newspapers have been scouring the Alps for him. Across the Atlantic, Bruno has made it into the New York Times and Newsweek.

Bruno T-shirts have been printed, Bruno Web sites have been created and a betting agency is offering odds on whether Bruno will be caught before Germany is kicked out of the World Cup.

He could save himself by getting caught soon. The Bavarian government has already found a three hectare site in a fenced-off wildlife refuge for Bruno. It's not the Alps but it's better than a painful death by a hunter's bullet. 

David Crossland