Paper short abstract:

The Apennine brown bear is reclaiming lands in the Central Apennines, from which disappeared centuries ago. Thus likelihood of interactions with traditional rural activities is increasing. Thanks to "bear smart community" living with wildlife is possible and has more benefits than constraints.

Paper long abstract:

The Apennine brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus) is an umbrella species in the Italian Central Apennines. As this subspecies of the European bear is reclaiming lands from which disappeared centuries ago, the likelihood of interactions with traditional rural activities is increasing. This urges the necessity to apply best practices to prevent human-bear conflicts. Improving farm animals’ welfare is a key driver to establish heathier habitats both for wildlife and humans. In fact, on the one hand industrial society and urban sprawl have fragmented the environment and detached the rural communities from ecological processes; on the other hand, land abandonment pushed nature close to households. Since the end of WWII, hobby farming has replaced professional farming, which was relegated to backyards and virtually separated from the encroaching forest. The natural comeback of the forest and wild inhabitants has been perceived by some residents as alien intruders and potential conflicts has risen. Salviamo l’Orso (SLO – Let’s save a bear), a grass-rooted NGO which focuses on grounded conservation actions, in 2015 started a bear smart community process in Pettorano sul Gizio, where a bear was shot dead the year before on retaliation of the killing of a few chickens. Since then, in collaboration with local partners, SLO has implemented a set of best practices which have shown a positive impact not only on bear conservation, but also on the local communities and the human-dominated landscape demonstrating that living with wildlife is possible and has more benefits than constraints.