A mother bear accused of attacking a hiker has been killed in Italy, with activists saying her cubs may not survive.

Despite protests from animal rights activists, an Italian Alpine province on Tuesday confirmed the killing of a female bear suspected of attacking a French hiker earlier this month.

Activists said the killing of the bear, identified as Kj1, puts her three cubs in “serious difficulty for survival.” The International Organisation for the Protection of Animals said the decree was issued overnight, making it impossible to seek a legal stay.

“OPIA Italia is dismayed by the killing of Kj1, which we tried to prevent with two lawsuits,” said Claudia Taccani, a lawyer for the organization, pointing out that a judge had suspended two previous killing orders to consider other remedies. “Unfortunately, this did not happen.”

The Alpine province of Trento, which is largely autonomous from the Italian government, is at the centre of a controversy over the culling of brown bears, which it says have too confidently invaded human territory in recent years.

A DNA analysis conducted after the attack on the French hiker revealed that Kj1 was responsible.

“Kj1 was a dangerous specimen,” the province said in a statement, citing a scale used to assess the threat posed by bears. “The animal was responsible for at least seven interactions with humans,” including the attack on the 43-year-old French hiker on July 16 in the municipality of Dro, north of Lake Garda.

The hiker is said to have strayed from the trail at an altitude of about 500 meters during a morning hike and encountered the bear, which injured his leg and arm. The hiker was able to escape and called for help.

It was the ninth incident of aggression against humans since brown bears were reintroduced to the province in 1999 as part of an EU project, and the first since a hiker was killed last summer.

Last September, a man was shot and killed an endangered brown bear near an Italian national park, leaving her two cubs motherless and sparking outrage across the country. The park released a graphic photo of the dead bear lying on the ground.

At the beginning of 2023, an administrative court saved the life of a Brown bear fatally attacked a runner on a mountain path in the Italian Alpine region.

Local political authorities had ordered the 17-year-old bear, known as Jj4, to be euthanized. Animal welfare groups have challenged the order to kill the bear.