Fed-Up Germany Kills Its Only Wild Bear By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service

Until last month, Germans hadn’t seen a wild bear in their country for more than 170 years. On Monday, they showed they still knew how to hunt.

Bruno, a bear who had romped across southern Germany since migrating over the Alps from Italy six weeks ago, was shot by a Bavarian hunter at sunrise. Government officials had authorized the use of deadly force after they failed to take him alive with an assortment of tricks, including a pack of Finnish tracking dogs, tranquilizer darts and nonlethal traps imported from the United States. …

Bruno, who was 2 years old and weighed an estimated 220 pounds, was born in northern Italy into a family that was resettled there as part of a wildlife restoration program. Italy and Austria have encouraged the growth of their small bear populations and have programs to compensate farmers and others for bear-related losses. …

Plans are to stuff him and put him on display in a museum in Munich — next to the remains of the last bear killed in Bavaria, in 1835.