The three-year-old animal, known only as M49, was captured on Sunday in the Val Rendena valley after it was spotted several times approaching inhabited areas.
Hours after being captured, the “genius” bear managed to climb over three electric fences and a four-metre-high barrier at the Casteller wildlife centre in the northern province of Trentino before disappearing into the woods.
Three teams from the state forestry corps with sniffer dogs were set on its trail.
The search was complicated by the fact that the bear’s tracking collar was apparently removed after its capture.
As of early afternoon on Tuesday, the bear had been photographed in woods on La Marzola mountain, south of Trento.
“If M49 approaches inhabited areas, the forestry service is authorised to kill it,” Maurizio Fugatti, governor of the Trentino region, said.
“The fact that the bear managed to climb over an electric fence with seven cables carrying 7000 volts ... shows how dangerous it is.”
But Italian Environment Minister Sergio Costa was quick to countermand that order.
“M49’s escape from the enclosure cannot justify an action that would cause its death,” he said.
Costa sent a team from the Italian Institute of Environmental Protection and Research to the province to clarify how the bear managed to escape and to “intervene with caution … without undermining the life of the animal”.
M49 is part of the Life Ursus project, which since the early 1990s has worked to reintroduce brown bears into the Trentino region after their population dwindled to just four in northern Italy.
Today, the population stands at around 50.
