ACTION C.2 – Conflict mitigation in the hot spot areas – damage cases
Damage to human property (e.g. beehives, livestock, orchards, fields, gardens, silage bales) is one of the most important causes for human-bear conflicts. Beside the loss of property, these locations also act as additional attractant for bears to approach human settlements and can cause bear habituation to human presence and food-conditioning.
In Slovenia and in Italian province Regione del Veneto best practice examples on the hotspots with frequent bear damages will be implemented. This will involve protection of livestock, beehives, orchards or individual fruit trees, fields, and gardens. We will use different protection techniques, which include electric fences and other devices for deterring brown bears from causing damages.
Two crucial goals of this project will be achieved within this action. With proper protection of human property the appearance of damage cases will be prevented so we expect that human acceptance of local inhabitants will be raised. At the same time attractants for bears in the vicinity of human settlements will be protected and for bears consequently removed. So they will not cause habituation of bears on human presence any more.
One of the most effective methods for damage protection is the use of livestock guarding dogs (LGDs), which has been almost entirely abandoned in Slovenia. Within a LIFE+ project on wolves (SloWolf) we already donated guarding dogs to some interested sheep breeders and started to educate individual breeders how to properly raise LGDs. In this action we would like to build upon this foundation and establish a working line of LGDs and a network of dedicated livestock guarding dog breeders in Slovenia and in Italy. We will select at least five motivated livestock breeders who will prove their interest and competences to develop a working line of livestock guardian dogs. The breeders will also become future advisors/experts in the area of breeding, advising on LGDs upbringing, and later follow up on the dogs placed with their new owners.
Latest C.2 actions:
LIFE DINALP BEAR and LIFE Wolfalps together for promoting livestock guarding dogs
Last week, our project partner Provincia Autonoma di Trento promoted a conference about livestock guarding dogs (LGDs), in collaboration with [...]
8 young “project” livestock guarding dogs joined new owners
We are proud to say that eight young dogs from the first “project” litter of livestock guarding dogs (nine males [...]
Monitoring the presence of a bear near garbage cans on Vojsko plateau, west Slovenia
LIFE DINALP BEAR project team reacted on local inhabitants’ request for information, as they were being faced with a garbage [...]
First Tornjak pups available in February
In December 2016, we announced the first litter of project livestock guarding dogs in Slovenia. Little pups are growing up [...]
A handbook on protecting sheep against large carnivore attacks has been published
The Slovenian Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, and Slovenia Forest Service have published a handbook about prevention measures of [...]
First »project« litter of livestock guarding dogs was born
The Sedmak farm near Pivka (Slovenia) is best-practice example of using livestock guarding dogs (LGDs) for protecting herds from large [...]
