Overview
- Videos that circulated on social media showed tourists surrounding, touching and feeding a male deer near Lago di Scanno, and those clips followed two recent incidents in which the animal charged visitors and knocked two men to the ground without serious injury.
- The Comune di Scanno is drafting an ordinance to prohibit approaching wild deer, a step the mayor says is meant to protect public safety and clarify expected behaviour around wildlife.
- Local officials told reporters the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise may remove and move the deer to a more distant area if the risk to people persists.
- Authorities across Italy have responded to this summer’s pattern of risky, social-media-driven tourist behaviour with measures that include Cortina’s fines of up to €500 and public appeals from mountain-rescue teams about misuse of emergency services.
- The episode highlights a broader tension between visitor demand for close wildlife encounters and conservation and safety needs, and it could prompt more municipal rules, stricter enforcement and wider public campaigns to change tourist conduct.