Abstract 78 – A forecast of human-wildlife incidents could help authorities anticipate risk and early react in Europe’s largest brown bear (Ursus arctos) population

Ancuta Fedorca, Pino Maria Sanchez, Mihai Fedorca, Marius Popa, Georgeta
Ionescu, Ovidiu Ionescu, Ramon Jurj

Human-wildlife coexistence is one of the central concerns in species conservation worldwide.
The increasing interactions between large carnivores and humans directly impact social
development strategies, which resonates in the public perception of these species and
unleashes negative consequences on ecological connectivity. In recent years, the increased
brown bear population within the Romanian Carpathians calls for urgent action to address
conflict management. We applied a holistic approach combining theoretical and practical
grounds to spatially predict the risk of human-bear conflict at Romania’s regional and national
levels. Two-fold analyses were performed based on i) the maximum entropy algorithm,
analysing data collected from emergency calls that reported brown bear incidents from 2017 to
2023, and ii) circuit theory, using practitioners’ knowledge to assign resistances to features that
characterize the hunting grounds. In addition, we analysed bear movement pathways
connecting conflict hotspots with the surrounding landscape. Higher risk indicators of human-
bear conflict correlate to human settlements in mountain valleys, agroforestry systems and
broadleaved forest patches adjacent to localities with significant fragmentation levels, reaching
0.9-0.8 rates. The results outline that medium and low-risk areas surrounding small towns and
communes are top-priority areas for prevention measures before conflict reaches high-risk
points, covering 15% area of the national extent. The designed spatial approach intends to help
managers implement carnivore deterrents and improve the efficiency of emergency
interventions to mitigate conflict.