Two Bavarian villages close to where Bruno was shot dead are vying for the right to display his stuffed remains, possibly aware of the world-famous bear's pulling power as a tourist attraction following his seven-week gourmet tour of Alpine livestock.

But Bavaria's Environment Ministry has insisted Bruno be put in a Munich natural history museum.

"The bear is the property of the state of Bavaria," said ministry spokesman Roland Eichhorn. "Having him in the Munich museum 'Mensch und Natur' (Humans and Nature) is the only sensible environment for him from the point of view of teaching and serious biological research."

Putting him in a farming museum close to where he was shot was "unsuitable", said Eichhorn, referring to a plea by former skiing champion Markus Wasmeier that Bruno find a home in his 25-hectare agricultural and winter sports museum near Lake Schliersee in the Bavarian Alps.

It was close to there, about 50 kilometers south of Munich, that Bruno was shot dead by an unnamed marksman a day after the government reinstated its permission for the "problem bear" to be killed because he was getting too close to humans in his food-seeking forays into Alpine villages and farms.

Wasmeier told reporters he could incorporate a stuffed Bruno into the museum as a "memorial" to make people rethink how they treat their environment. That would be better than putting him in a glass showcase "as one bear among many," said Wasmeier.

But Helmut Limbrunner, the mayor of the neighboring village of Bayrischzell, weighed into the debate by pointing out that Bruno was shot dead within the boundaries of his own local authority, so that his community should be allowed to keep him.

Call to Slice Up Bruno

Meanwhile, Gunther von Hagens, famous for preserving human and animal corpses and displaying them both whole and sliced in his "Body Worlds" exhibition, told the newspaper Bild: "I want to preserve Bruno for posterity to show his muscle power and skeleton."

He said he didn't need Bruno's fur. "By cutting him into slices I could show the route of the rifle bullet and the wounded lung," said von Hagens. He said he would donate €10,000 to an animal welfare organization in return for Bruno.

Ministry spokesman Eichhorn rejected the offer. "The skeleton and organs are going to be used for teaching purposes so it won't be physically possible to make him available for this controversial show which appears to court sensation," he said.

The outpouring of public grief and anger at Bruno's demise has taken many forms. Outraged members of the public have filed legal complaints against the ministry, memorial websites have been created and death threats have been made against the anonymous hunter who shot him.

Bild printed a poster-sized photo of the happy-looking, chubby bear taken last weekend with the words "Farewell Bruno." Stuffed toymaker Steiff has said it will produce a limited edition of 2,000 Brunos with black ribbons tied around them.

Authorities in Italy, where Bruno lived before he made his fateful journey northwards, criticized the shooting. Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio issued a statement saying: "A European Union which appeals to the whole world to save protected species and then shoots dead a bear with rifles simply isn't credible."

Shooting the bear was "unacceptable," he added.

Eichhorn of the Bavarian Environment Ministry responded: "We can't understand this form of criticism. The authorities in Trentino (the Italian region where Bruno was born) had sent us a letter telling us that they did not want him back.