Approach to dealing with problem situations involving large carnivores

The Swedish Wildlife Damage Centre (Viltskadecenter, VSC), part of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) is a collaborative centre funded by the government. The VSC brings together researchers with decades-worth of experience of dealing with wildlife damage to carry out a range of research and consultancy activities. This combination of practical experience and multi-disciplinary research gathered at the VSC has proved to be crucial in bringing forward the ways of reacting to problematic incidents and developing and adapting approaches with experiences gained. While initially, aversive conditioning (shooting with rubber bullets and fire crackers) was the first reaction to a large carnivore approaching a human settlement, now a more nuanced approach is followed with a series of actions, assessing the situation and removing attractants as first step. If this does not solve the problem, a protocol of escalated actions is followed from averse conditioning to removal of the problem animal after a set period if no other solution is found. The certainty this gives to local people that the problem will be dealt with in a particular manner in a set time-frame has improved trust of the authorities and reduced the potential for animals to be removed when this is not necessary.

For more information see the description of the case study on the Platform website.

A report describing ten good practice case studies is also available.