Understanding brown bear behaviour in areas where there are many opportunities for them to cause problems to people is crucial for designing appropriate conflict mitigation measures. Radio tracking of bears provides valuable data on how bears use available resources and what protection measures work the best.

Recently we have captured and equipped with tracking collars three bears in the conflict hot-spot areas of Slovenian bear range. A 175-kg male from hunting ground Velike Lašče and two females (120 and 131 kg) from special purpose hunting ground Snežnik were fitted with a GPS-GSM radio collar, enabling us to track their movements and activities. One of the collars has a video camera installed. We will use gathered materials also as a tool to educate public on how to avoid human-bear conflicts.

In Slovenia, we plan to monitor 8 bears using a radio collar within the project. Most of them will be captured in the bear core area, and 2 of them in the north-western part of the country, which will give us insight on brown bear population expanding to the Alpine region.