HUMAN-BEAR CONFLICT

To prevent human-wildlife conflicts in the future, we need to understand how conflict behaviors develops in populations. This is especially true for bears because human-bear conflicts are not limited to agricultural damage and livestock depredations, but often include incidents with people. Such conflicts can put both bears and people at risk of injury or death. While the solutions are more straightforward for other large carnivores (e.g., livestock protection measures against wolves), they are less so for omnivorous bears that have complex behavior. We ask, why are some bears involved in conflict and others are not?