Vote reignites heated debate in Trentino.

Residents of Val di Sole in the autonomous Trentino province in the far-north of Italy voted overwhelmingly against wild bears and wolves in a consultative referendum on Sunday.

The non-binding vote asked residents if they believed that the presence of bears and wolves in densely populated areas such as the Valli di Sole, Peio and Rabbi, represented a "serious danger to public safety and a detriment to the economy and the protection of local customs and traditions?"

Voter turnout was 63 per cent with 7,731 citizens voting "yes" - more than 98 per cent - against just 111 "no" votes.

The referendum was pushed through by the Insieme per Andrea Papi committee, named after a 26-year-old Italian man mauled to death by a bear while jogging along a mountain path in the region last year.

Eight environmental associations, from WWF to Legambiente, slammed the vote as "a farce aimed at deceiving people" while jurists warned that calling on voters to "express their opinion in vain" sets "a dangerous precedent", La Repubblica reports.

The referendum comes 25 years after bears were reintroduced in Trentino, from Slovenia, as part of the Life Ursus scheme, which critics claim has got out of hand.

The project had originally envisaged about 50 bears in the province but the population has since grown to around 100 animals, leading to calls for increased control over bear numbers.

In western Trentino, which in addition to 100 bears is home to around 200 wolves, locals have expressed concerns for people who frequent the mountains, the survival of grazing livestock, and the decline in tourists scared away by news of bear attacks.

Although Sunday's referendum has no legal impact, it carries significant political weight, with Trentino's rightwing governor Maurizio Fugatti leading calls to control bear numbers by culling.

In recent years Fugatti has ordered the capture and culling of "problematic" bears and has proposed, without success, to transport dozens of the wild animals abroad.

Italy's environment minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin is against culling but has voiced his support for a campaign to sterilise female bears, an approach contested by enviornmentalists and animal rights activists and never implemented elsewhere, according to La Repubblica.

Last week a 33-year-old Italian man was attacked by a bear while picking mushrooms near the village of Rango in Trentino.

In a subsequent interview with La Stampa, the man pleaded for the bear not to be killed, calling instead for increased monitoring of the animals' movements and behaviour.