Bérénice Guinel, Serena Frau, Valerio Reale

In Europe’s human-dominated landscapes, approaches to human-large carnivore coexistence are gaining traction. Coexistence is a dynamic process in which people and wildlife flourish within shared environments, shaped by multispecies interactions. While conservation policies have supported wildlife recovery, coexistence remains challenging in many regions. This talk explores how local governance innovation and knowledge co-creation can drive transformative change for human-bear coexistence.
Using Participatory Action Research, we examine how integrating local human and bear perspectives into planning fosters a shift from reliance on conservation authorities and non-governmental organizations toward community co-leadership of coexistence strategies. We present a case study from the Italian Apennines, where people coexist with the critically endangered Apennine brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus). Through the Bear-Smart Corridors project, Rewilding Apennines and partners have established “Bear-Smart Communities” in areas of bear population expansion.
Focusing on three emerging Bear-Smart Communities, we collaborated with municipal committees of farmers, hunters, beekeepers, administrators, tourism operators, and bear representatives to co-design actions through workshops, participatory mapping, and implementation of coexistence measures. Methods combined social-ecological systems network mapping, explicitly including bears as actors, with the Three Horizons visioning approach. Outcomes included municipal coexistence plans, spatial datasets of bear attractants, and defined responsibilities over three years.
Our findings show that integrating human and bear perspectives enables context-specific coexistence strategies, fostering local support, co-leadership, and long-term commitment by formally representing bears within governance and transforming human-bear relationships toward kinship within shared landscapes.