Since Sunday five hunting dogs flown in from Finland have been on the lookout for Bruno, who absconded from the Adamello-Brenta nature reserve in Italy's northern Trentino region in May.

The bear appears to have gone south of the border. He was spotted in Austria, near the small central town of Vomp, ripping apart a hare.

The dogs and a number of veterinarians have followed, and for the moment there is no update on how close they are to him.

The hunters hope to capture him alive and dart him, said Chris Walzer, an Austrian animal specialist who has captured rhinoceros in Africa and Asia.

"This is standard practice," he said, but added that they will also shoot the bear if they believe they are in danger.

Since he left Italy a few weeks ago, Bruno has been roaming between northern Austria and Bavaria, leaving plundered beehives and chicken coops and bits of dead animal in his wake on both sides of the border.

His tally for the past month includes some two dozen sheep.

In Germany, excitement at having a brown bear in the country again soon turned to panic as Bruno ventured close to farm houses to get at his prey. He also moved around so much that nobody was quite sure where he would crop up and when.

Within days the regional environment ministry declared the bear a menace and gave hunters permission to shoot him.

Animal welfare organisations were outraged, and newspapers were filled with the opinions of experts who studied the bear's origin and breeding to explain his unpredictable behaviour.

A few have pointed a finger at his mother, Jurka, and the way she raised him.

"He is a young lad. He is trying to find his turf," Joern Ehrlers, from the German section of the World Wide Fund for Nature told AFP.

"So there is nothing strange about him covering 20, 30 kilometres (15, 20 miles) a day."

Ehrlers said the bear and his sibling were only behaving like their mother, who did not have bears' usual shyness of people.

"This is the way she brought him up."

Genetic studies have confirmed that Bruno is part of a group of Slovenian bears that were recently introduced into Italy, where he was known as JJ1.

His brother, JJ2, caused the same havoc in Switzerland last year before disappearing completely.

The Bavarian environment ministry has assured the public that Bruno does not pose a danger to people, as long as he does not feel threatened by them.

Somebody hiking in the forest is probably safe because the bear will sense his presence and stay away. But a farmer who surprised the bear while he was killing an animal in a pen could be attacked, even killed, they said.

There has never been any attempt to reintroduce bears to Germany after the last one here was killed in 1835.

Environment authorities believe the countryside here is not suited to them, unlike Austria, where bears have been reintroduced in the Tyrol, in Carinthia in the southwest, and Lower Austria in the northeast over the past decade.

Brown bears are also being reintroduced in the Pyrenees in southwestern France, but this programme has met with a some opposition.

Critics say the animals, who were also brought from Slovenia, are used to being fed by humans and are not capable of fending for themselves in the new environment.

If he is captured, Bruno may well end up staying in Germany. The Austrians do not want the bear and the Italians are not sure they do either.

"The Italian government has indicated that the nature reserve in Trentino could take him back. But the park itself says it will not. We need a clear answer from Italy," said Roland Eichhorn, the spokesman for the Bavarian environment ministry.

The WWF's Erhlers believes the best home for the bear would be the Poing nature reserve in Bavaria.

"It is the best place for him, because it is too late now, he is not going to change his behaviour."

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