MEN, BEARS AND WOLVES: large carnivores in the Alps.

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Centuries of persecution have led to the local extinction of large predators such as lynx, wolf and bear in vast regions of the Alps. In the last 20 years we are witnessing their return. This return is sometimes natural and spontaneous and sometimes is the result of reintroduction projects.
Among these carnivores, two in particular are cause for heated discussion: the bear and the wolf.

Author / translator Laura Tagnin

Centuries of persecution have led to the extinction of large predators such as lynx, wolf and bear. In many parts of the Alps. In the last 20 years we are witnessing their return This return is sometimes natural and spontaneous and sometimes is the result of reintroduction projects. Among these carnivores, two in particular are cause for heated discussion: the bear and the wolf. Their presence has never left man indifferent, and their fate has followed social and cultural changes over the centuries. Considered in their early days as totemic and magical animals, predators to be respected and learned from, they were demonized in the dark ages of the Middle Ages, until they became direct rivals of man in the agricultural and pastoral economy of mountain peoples. Hunted to their (almost) complete extinction, bears and wolves nevertheless left man two important and bizarre legacies: the bear turned into cuddly stuffed animals to make the nights of man's cubs quieter; the wolf into trusty companions for multiple human activities, from rescue to hard work in the mountains to cuddling on the couch...the dog. Today, those who live in the Alps are confronted with differing opinions on the meaning and consequences of the return of these large carnivores. It is becoming increasingly clear that the fate of large carnivores in the Alps will depend on what people decide to do to manage their presence!

Aims of the game

UOMINI, ORSI E LUPI è un kit PlayDecide per discutere del ritorno dei grandi carnivori sulle Alpi, un argomento attuale e oggetto di un acceso dibattito. Gli esperti sono concordi che il ruolo dell'opinione pubblica sarà sempre più cruciale nel sancire il futuro dei grandi carnivori sulle Alpi (e in tutta Europa). Oggi tocca a voi esprimere il vostro parere! Kit realizzato dal MUSE - Museo delle Scienze, nell'ambito dei progetti LIFE WOLFALPS (LIFE12 NAT/IT/000807) e LIFE DINALP BEAR (LIFE13 NAT/SL/000550)

Created 15 October 2024

Last edited 25 October 2024

Topics Environment, Sustainability

Original Italian

Policy positions

Policy position 1

The Alps are an overly anthropized mountainous area where the presence of large carnivores is not compatible with human presence. Wolves and bears currently present need to be moved to less anthropized places.

Policy position 2

The free coexistence of humans, bears and wolves on the Alpine territory is not sustainable. These animals, whose value in terms of biodiversity and tourism potential is recognized, can only live in special, strictly controlled reserves where total control of the two species is possible, also through planned culling, when necessary.

Policy position 3

The presence and wildlife of bears and wolves in the Alps must be protected, but human activities, such as livestock, agriculture, and tourism, must also be protected. Any problematic individual must be managed with actions including reduction to captivity or as a last resort, culling.

Policy position 4

Bears and wolves have inhabited the Alps long before us: they have the right to use the territory according to their instincts. Humans can try to prevent the unpleasant effects of their presence, but they cannot limit their lives with any form of control, withdrawals and culling.

Story cards

I became mayor of this mountain town by promising my electors to protect their interests. Here on the mountains we live on sheep farming, organic farming and tourism.
But since the wolves arrived three years ago, the situation has rapidly changed. The pack has increased in a few years and started raiding domestic livestock and causing concern among tourists, who have canceled many reservations for next year.
The wolf is a predator, and for those who live in the city, it is not easy to understand how everything changed since the return of the wolf. As the first citizen, I have to guarantee security to my fellow citizens and to defend their interests, including the economic ones. And this may involve the removal of all the wolves from my territory to more suitable and controlled areas.

Giacomo Bianchi, mayor

My family has lived in this little village for as long as I can remember. Like many of us, true inhabitants of the mountains, I go to walk in the woods as often as I can. My passion for mushrooms was handed down to me by my grandfather. He taught me how to recognize them and what are the best areas to find them. I have my secret areas, which nobody knows about. And I always make a good haul, so much so that I often supply the restaurants of a couple of friends as well. I'm talking about local wild mushrooms, not cultivated or foreign ones....
Since the bear returned nothing has been the same again. We are all against the presence of the bears here. There have become too numerous and they are dangerous for the mushroom hunter, but also for any woman who walks to her farm. The solution? Take them back to where they came from, otherwise it will be our traditions that will die. My question is: Should we be the ones to leave our mountains, after having always taken good care of them, or the bear?

Giovanni Longhi, mushroomer

Being a stock famer has been my life choice, and I have been doing it for more than 20 years. I take goats and cows to the mountain pastures and we make cheese according to the old traditions. It is hard work, with no vacations; in good or bad weather you are always on duty.
When I miss a goat in the evening, I can't go look for it, because I have too many things to do, like milking, herding... And when the following days you find it mauled by wolves, you feel bad.
First, you've got the animal killed, then you have to deal with time-consuming bureaucratic procedures to certify the predation, and after all that they may even question your word. Sometimes I think about just giving up....
To those who want the wolf back I say: in order not to make the wolf extinct you are making us shepherds extinct!

FLorenzo Fasan, stock farmer

We hunters live a mystical relationship with nature; we respect it. We follow patiently the trail of your prey or lurk for hours in absolute silence and wait. And the rules of hunting are very clear: a maximum number of animals at a time, never too many, avoid females in specific periods.
Then the wolf returned: the most beautiful animal I have ever seen. But, undoubtedly, a skilled hunter. To him the rules of hunting do not apply. He steals prey from us, undermining a traditional man-nature relationship, that has lasted for centuries. Not to mention the bear: my son asked me why we don't go into the woods with bear bells. This is not the approach to nature that I plan to teach him: we enter the woods in dutiful silence.

Giuseppe Foresta, hunter

Hi, my name is Mattia, I am 10 years old and I am a boy scout, actually a wolf cub!
Every year I go to the mountains with my squadron to spend a few days immersed in nature ... and to test ourselves! The atmosphere there is very much that of the pack. In fact, the wolf is my favorite animal: it lives in a family, everyone takes care of the little ones and they are loyal, just like dogs. Of course sometimes they get aggressive, but not because they are bad, they do it because they are predators and they have to hunt. The bear is also present in my woods. It is a bit bigger and it might be scary to meet him, but I am sure he is harmless, very shy and would only run away at the smell of my squadron mates' boots!

Mattia Battistoni, boy scout

I have been studying wolves for 20 years now. I had the opportunity to see one once, during my PhD studies. It was one of the first wolves returned to the Piedmont. From there on, my academic training was enriched by an experience in the United States, in the Yellowstone Park, where I was able to learn a lot about these animals.
The sociality and playful behavior of wolves have always amazed me. Once, while monitoring, I encountered a she-wolf, which after an initial moment of curiosity, interacted with me showing a typical playful behavior, perhaps because it had been alone for too long. It is difficult to say what is stranger, whether the man who stimulated the she-wolf to play or the she-wolf who played along, but even this bizarre episode demonstrates the friendly nature of the wolf. It is not surprising that the dog is the result of the wolf's domestication process.

Giada Maricco, researcher

As soon as we can, my wife and I leave the hubbub and smog of the city to come to these beautiful mountains. The contact with nature relaxes and recharges us at the same time. We spend a lot of time taking long walks on the trails in silence. It is not uncommon to come across a woodpecker, catch a glimpse of a roe deer and, higher up, observe marmots. For the past few years, however, we have been hearing about the return of bears to these very areas, and many close encounters. We are fascinated by this pristine environment that has allowed the return of these carnivores, but we often wonder: what would we do if one day we found them in front of us, in the middle of the trail?

Carmelo Rossi, tourist

I love Nature and do everything to live in its full respect. I am careful about the products I buy and what I eat, I move as much as possible by bicycle, and I practice ecotourism. I especially love animals and stand up for their rights. I was also there to protest against the capture and killing of bears defined as “problem” bears.
Those who are afraid should be better informed: cases of attacks on humans are very rare and occur only if bears have been provoked.
After all, I too am a mother and would do anything to protect my children....

Giovanna Boschi, activist ambientalist

INFO CARDSISSUE CARDS

A leopard can't change its spots

Unlike the bear, the wolf is a specialist carnivore, an effective and cunning predator: if given the opportunity, it can repeatedly prey on domestic animals, causing economic damage to farmers.

The Big Bad Wolf

Throughout history the wolf has been featured in hundreds of myths and legends. Ferocity, cowardice, and courage are human qualities that have been attributed to the wolf. In the Western culture the wolf has often impersonated the evil.

A bitter bite

When the conflict between large carnivores and human activities gets out of hand, in many cases we see the appearance of poisoned bites: an illegal and cowardly practice that can seriously impact not only the entire ecosystem, but also domestic dogs and children.

Trophy hunters

The wolf preys on the same ungulate species (such as deers) as human hunters. Unlike humans, wolves prefer weak, sick, very young or very old prey because they are easier to prey on.

More work for stock farmers

Although effective prevention devices exist, their implementation and maintenance represents an extra job on top of the already hard daily tasks of livestock farmers and herders.

Collateral damage

Bear and wolf predation on domestic livestock, beehives, and orchards are generally compensated.
However, sometimes indirect damages, such as decreased milk in cows that survived an attack, are not reimbursed.

Authorized culling

The authorised culling of bears and wolves to limit damage can lead to extremely different results.
For the bear, there is evidence that culling a problematic specimen may solve many problems.
In the case of the wolf, the argument is more controversial, partly because of the more complex social structure of this species.

Sharing the forests

Hikers and mushroomers often fear encounters with wolves or bears in the woods.
Will going back to sharing the mountains with these large carnivores limit humans' freedom?

Bipolar syndrome

When it comes to wolves and bears, it seems that the world is sharply divided into those who love them and those who hate them. In such a situation, agreeing on rational and shared management solutions can prove very difficult.

Wolf, wolf!

An alleged wolf attack on humans makes headlines, and sells copies.
It is not uncommon for the media, especially local ones, to give space to unverified reports of attacks by vicious wolves. To date, no attack on humans has been verified by competent personnel.

Beware of the dog (wolf)

With good grace from Jack London, wolves hate dogs.
A dog alone in the territory of a pack is seriously at risk of an even deadly attack by wolves who identify it as a “conspecific” intruder, in effect a “lone wolf.”

Beware of the dog (bear)

There are indications that a dog, even if accompanied by its owner, may cause a hostile reaction from a bear in the event of an encounter in the forest.

No borders

Bears and wolves are extremely mobile animals. In a few months they can travel hundreds of kilometers. However, their management is often the responsibility of local authorities. The result is a fragmented and discontinuous approach to managing the two species in the Alpine regions.

We were better off when He was NOT there

There is no doubt that, for certain professional groups, life was less complicated when wolf and bear were not around.

Motherly love

Is it right to suppress or reduce a bear to captivity because, driven by the defensive instinct of her cubs, she attacked a human being?

With all the people starving to death?

Is it right to use economic resources for wolf and bear conservation and study when they could be used in other fields such as health, agriculture, social policies?

Compensations

Economic compensations for damages caused by bears and wolves vary. The amount, the timing and manner of economic compensation depends on local governments.
This disparity exacerbates the discontent among those who sustained the damage.

Beware of the dog (man)

Guard dogs can be very effective in defending flocks and herds. But if not properly trained and cared for they can become a danger to hikers.

Cocooned carnivores

Could excessive safeguarding of large carnivores lead them to overconfidence with humans?
Will new generations of wolves and bears, which do not experience human pressure, continue to avoid it?

Who should I believe?

The interests around the world of large carnivores are so strong that news about these species is very often exploited and manipulated.
Who tells me the truth about bears and wolves? The journalist, the politician or the scientist?

It is not a dog, it is not a wolf....

There is a legislative vacuum regarding the management of dog-wolf hybrids.
Should they be preserved and protected like wolves or can they be put in kennels like stray dogs?

At ... zero risk?

We live in what is called the “zero-risk society” in which we try to predict the inevitable randomness and to reduce every bit of risk.
If, however, as sociologists remind us, there is no such thing as a zero-risk life, what is the degree of risk we are willing to accept in order to have bears and wolves back in the Alps?

Big Brother

Equipping all Alpine bears and wolves with radiocollars would entail great difficulties and cost, against very dubious benefits.

The risks of the trade

Management of large carnivores also involves their capture, for example to equip them with radio collars. These operations involve a degree of risk to both the operator and the wolf or the bear.

A natural return

After reaching its lowest point in the 1970s as a result of severe persecution perpetuated by humans, the wolf population in Italy is recovering thanks to conservation and protection efforts and the species' great adaptability and mobility.

How many wolves are there in the Alps?

“What do you care?” is how Luigi Boitani (among the top wolf experts) responds when someone asks him the question at the end of one of his lectures.
The number of Italian wolves is estimated between 1,000 and 1,500 in the Apennines, and between 60 and 90 in the Alps.
Boitani's irony refers to the fact that the number of individuals in the territory is not indicative of their impact on human activities.

Living in packs

Wolves usually live in packs.
A wolf pack consists of an average of 4-5 individuals: the pair that founded the pack (the alpha pair, which are the only individuals that reproduce) and the others, that are usually the pups from previous years.

Does the wolf do damage?

Yes. The damage caused by wolves to human activities mainly involves attacking grazing animals, mainly sheep, goats and to a lesser extent cattle.

Everyone on the hunt!

Pack hunting, led by the alpha pair, grants the wolf access to large preys, making it an unrivaled predator in the forest environment... humans aside.

Lone wolves

Young wolves often leave the pack and go in search of fortune: they set out into the unknown, hoping to find territory unoccupied by other wolves and to meet a mate with whom they can form a new pack.
Scholars call this phenomenon “dispersal.”

The hard life of the lone wolf

Most dispersing wolves die from road and rail investments, poaching, starvation, disease, and attacks by other wolves whose territory they have encroached upon.

The stork in the pack

In the Alps, wolves' alpha pair generally mates in February and births occur after 63 days of gestation. The pups (3-4 on average) are born blind and deaf and remain in the den until 7-8 weeks of age.
Until 6 months of age, cubs are left in a quiet, safe area, which is called a rendezvous site, around which the pack gravitates.

A historic encounter

In 2012, in Lessinia (North-Eastern Italian Alps), the wolf Slavc arrived in dispersal from Slovenia and met the she-wolf Juliet from the Western Alps. The two started a family, thus forming the first wolf pack in the Eastern Alps after a 150-year absence.

Super protected

In Italy, wolves and bears have been protected animals since 1976 and 1939, respectively.
Their hunting or any persecution is criminally punished: killing a specimen not only carries a fine but can lead to jail time. The two species are also protected at the European level by the 1979 Bern Convention and and the 1992 Habitats Directive.

Wolf hunger

A wolf eats an average of 2-4 kg of meat per day. Howerver, it is extremely adaptable, as it can fast several days and then consume up to 10 kg of meat at one time.
Its diet varies with seasons and locations, but generally consists of 90 percent wild ungulates and 10 percent domestic ungulates, small mammals and vegetables.

Natural selection

The pack preferentially preys on young, sick or old wild ungulates (large mammals with hooves, such as deers), making a selection on the prey population.

An “artificial” return

The brown bear has been the subject of a biologically successful reintroduction project.
Almost disappeared from the Alps due to severe persecution perpetuated by man (in 1996 there were 3 specimens left, all in Trentino), it was reintroduced to the Alps in 1999 with the LIFE URSUS project.

Bear, bear where are you?

There are roughly a hundred brown bear specimens in Italy. Half of these belong to the subspecies endemic to the central Apennines, the Marsican brown bear. The other half lives in the Trentino territory and neighboring regions.

You are such a bear!

The saying is just right!
The social life of the bear is very limited (to the mating and cub-caring period) and in some cases social interactions have aberrant characteristics, from a human perspective: for example, the practice of infanticide by male specimens, in order to make females available for mating again, is not uncommon.

Males on the road, females at home

Only male bears engage in dispersal phenomena, traveling more than 20 km in a night in exploration, while females remain loyal to the area where they were born. This means that bears populations do not spread like wolves do.

No cuddling, we are bears!

Although the bear is seen as a more “cuddly” animal than the wolf in fact the opposite is true.
The wolf starts a family, is faithful all his life to his partner and allows his older offspring to remain in the pack.
The bear, on the other hand, abandons its mate soon after mating: after all, she is so unfaithful that in the same litter two siblings can have different fathers!

Winter naps

Most bears hibernate from November to March.
Sleeping is not always continuous: sporadic awakenings, also dictated by mild weather conditions, may induce waking up and leaving the den.

Attacks on humans

There have been no documented reports of wolf attacks on humans in Europe for more than 100 years.
In rare cases there are documented cases of attacks (even fatal) by bears, mainly caused by females with cubs or by animals injured in hunting activities.
Both brown bears and wolves do not consider humans to be prey.

A vegetarian carnivore

Although classified as a large carnivore, the bear feeds mainly on plants and insects.
Meat intake to its diet is very low (less than 10 percent) and is mostly from animals found already dead.

PACOBACE

It is not a swear word!
It stands for the Interregional Action Plan for the Conservation of the Brown Bear in the Central and Eastern Alps (Piano d'Azione interregionale per la conservazione dell'Orso bruno sulle Alpi centro-orientali). This document, agreed upon between the state and local governments, was created to manage the coexistence of bears with humans in the Italian Alps.
A similar document exists for the Apennines: the PATOM.

Problematic bears

According to PACOBACE a bear is defined as “problematic” when it is “harmful” to human activities or “dangerous” to human safety.
Dangerousness is attested through a table of risk behaviors.

What kind of damages

In the Alps, the most common bear damages are: destruction of beehives, looting of fruits and grains from cultivated fields, predation of grazing animals.

It is either prevention or predation!

There are various methods of preventing damage from large carnivores.
The most common are electrified fences, herder presence, guard dogs, visual deterrents (wires with colored flags called fladry), acoustic deterrents, and night shelters for livestock.