Why is it so important to invest in education about the brown bear? Bears have been coexisting with humans for a long period of time. With the increase in human population, the conflicts with bears began appearing more often. Education is a tool for providing children and youth knowledge and a positive outlook on bears. This way, the future will be brighter for both species.

We want to encourage teachers working at elementary and high schools to include local topics in their biology classes. That is why we decided to produce a teacher’s handbook »Brown bear as a model organism for biology class«. The handbook offers answers to many questions about the bear biology and conservation. It also presents conflict mitigation measures implemented as part of the LIFE DINALP BEAR project.

Worksheets are added to individual sections of the handbook, and a Powerpoint presentation with explanation of individual slides is also available. The handbook is published in Slovene. Croatian translation and adaptation is being developed.

USB drives with teacher’s handbooks are part of educational bear kits, distributed to schools in bear areas, implementing educational workshops. Bear kits also include bear footprint models and a set of publications, published within our project.

For more information, please contact us at jasna.mladenovic@bf.uni-lj.si.