EU Platform on Coexistence between People & Large Carnivores

2020 has not been an easy year. While we had high hopes in the summer that face-to-face meetings could take place in autumn, this has only been possible to a limited extent. The regional platforms have organised some smaller-scale local meetings but the EU Platform has continued to work remotely. Our second “regional workshop” was organised as a webinar with the collaboration of the hunting organisations among our members: the European Federation for Hunting and Conservation & Conservation (FACE) and the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC), and the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Specialist group on large carnivores: the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe (LCIE). Examples from different countries demonstrated that hunters are already very engaged in surveying and supporting monitoring efforts in many EU countries, which contributes significantly to the amount of data collected. Additionally, hunters or other stakeholders contributing to monitoring, are more likely to support the results and to solve the conflicts concerning the actual status of large carnivore populations. The webinar participants (hunters and non-hunters) clearly showed their support for further involving hunters in monitoring efforts.

The webinar is available on the Platform website and I hope it will provide some interesting watching for those of us confined for a second time. Wishing our readers all the best for the festive season and a good start to 2021!

Jurgen Tack

Scientific Director of the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO)

Co-chair of the EU Platform on Coexistence between People and Large Carnivores

The webinar co-organised between FACE, CIC and LCIE aimed to explore the different activities carried out in surveying and monitoring LC populations and showed how stakeholders (especially hunters) are involved in surveying and inputting data to monitoring schemes. The webinar also discussed the desirability and potential for expanding the role of stakeholders in data collection.

The EU Platform members and experts in monitoring from different countries presented how surveying and monitoring techniques are applied in a range of countries. Hunters are already involved in monitoring in many countries. There is also the potential to bring in other stakeholders. Participants were asked for their opinions on participating in monitoring schemes (if they were hunters themselves) or what they thought of hunters participating in monitoring schemes. The vast majority agreed that it could bring benefits.

The presentations and the webinar video are available on the Platform website.

The EU Platform aims to engage with similar regional groupings which focus on conflict around large carnivore presence in different areas in the EU. The two EU-funded projects on the establishment of regional platforms on people and large carnivores work together with stakeholders to discuss issues around large carnivore coexistence on the national, regional or local context. Six regional platforms have been established in Italy, Romania, Spain and Germany, France and Sweden.

The regional platforms in Grosseto, Italy and Harghita, Romania are putting in place the actions they have agreed on in collaborations between the platform participants. In Grosseto, a short video (IT only), presenting the activities undertaken, has been produced. In Harghita, protections against bear attacks have been provided to four farms. Work included securing beehives, setting up fences for protecting cows and sheep. In Avila, an additional meeting to prioritise actions was carried out online.

The first meeting of the Vercors Platform, France took place on 14 September in Méaudre, Isère within the Vercors Regional Natural Park. The group included livestock breeders, shepherds, tourism operators and NGOs and agreed on the focus of prevention measures (especially Livestock Guarding Dogs) and other land uses. A second meeting was planned for November but was cancelled due to the restrictions with regard to the Corona pandemic.

A video promoting the different platforms and their work has been produced and will be available shortly on the EU Large Carnivores Platform webpage here. The video describes the aims and achievements of the regional platforms and their relationship with the EU Platform.

In September, FACE published a position of wolf management. In it, the hunting and wildlife organisation makes clear that they support the goal of the Habitats Directive to reach a favourable conservation status of large carnivores in Europe, and that they continue to prioritise the engagement and collaboration with other stakeholders, including through the EU Large Carnivores Platform, to work together for a better coexistence.

The EU Green Week 2020, which was focused on biodiversity, took place online this year. This years’ programme consisted of an opening event in Lisbon, Portugal (European Green Capital 2020) as well as a full-day conference to discuss ongoing and future biodiversity trajectories. This was followed by a 3-day online event in Brussels. The conference presentations can be watched online.

The Natura 2000 Awards, which celebrate and reward outstanding contributions to management of and communication about the Natura 2000 network, took place as a hybrid event this year. Finalists joined from around Europe by teleconference. The European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius announced the winners of the fifth edition of the Natura 2000 Awards. The project “Joint efforts for safe and wildlife-friendly transportation networks in the Carpathians” with partners in Romania, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine, won the Cross-border Cooperation and Networking Award for its interdisciplinary cooperation addressing landscape fragmentation in the Carpathian Mountains which should benefit a range of large carnivore species. The finalists also included a project on landscape connectivity for large carnivores in Romania.

The DINALP BEAR LIFE project won the nature protection category at the LIFE Awards 2020 which took place as an online event during the Green Week. The Awards recognise innovative, inspirational and effective LIFE projects in three categories: climate action, environment and nature protection. The projects role in bringing together different stakeholders to work together on coexistence was recognised and rewarded.

A lynx has been photographed in the wild for the first time in Belgium. The individual was spotted in the Vallée de la Semois in the South of Belgium on the 27 August according to Belgium news reports (FR only).

The editors of the Carnivore Damage Prevention News (CDP News) are grateful to the LIFE EuroLargeCarnivores project for financing the publication of the CDP News until 2022. CDP News present actions and results from this project as well as from the EU Platform on Coexistence between People and Large Carnivores and the ENCOSH knowledge-sharing platform in a series of pop-up features. A News Roundup section highlights recent developments relating to conflicts and coexistence with large carnivores.

Issue 20 has just been published. With a distinctly southern European flavour, it includes articles on the long-term efficacy of prevention measures in the Iberian peninsula; activities of the LIFE WolFlux project in Portugal; and a special feature on management of bears and wolves in Trentino, Italy. It also includes a novel comparison between marine and terrestrial environments based on the workshop “Predator Controls: Lessons from Land to Sea” held at the World Marine Mammal Conference in Barcelona, Spain, in December 2019.

A Special Section was recently published in Conservation Biology on Challenges of and Solutions to Human‐Wildlife Conflicts in Agricultural Landscapes. Several articles cite examples of conflicts connected to Large Carnivores. The issue can be accessed online.

The second meeting of the “EIP-AGRI Focus Group on Wildlife and Agricultural Production” took place on 13 and 14 October 2020. The EIP-AGRI Focus Groups are temporary groups of selected experts focusing on a specific subject, sharing knowledge and experience. CIC and Callisto from the Platform Secretariat are represented on the EIP-AGRI group.

At the second meeting, which was held as a video conference, group members presented mini papers developed on subjects such as “Effective instruments to reduce conflicts between farming and wildlife”, or “Managing human-wildlife relationship under a territorial framework”. These papers will be discussed and finalized before disseminating them through EIP-AGRI networks. One example of concrete action from the group is the Italian Operational Group ULTRAREP which is working on innovative ultrasonic technology to protect crops from ungulates, in a sustainable way, while not harming the animals.

The webinar which took place 29 September and was hosted by MEPs Michal Wiezik (EEP/Slovakia) and Nicolae Ştefănuță (Renew Europe). It included a panel discussion with the EU Platform members ELO (represented by Jurgen Tack) and LCIE (represented by Valeria Salvatori). The group discussed further support needed for livestock managers coexisting with large carnivores.

The EUROPARC conference took place on 8-9 September as an online event and focused on future-proofing Europe’s protected areas. The balance between different interest groups and land uses within protected areas was widely discussed in the two-day programme.

The intergroup to which ELO and FACE provide the Secretariat, organised an online conference on 18 November on coexistence with large carnivores, with regard to the Commission’s awaited revised guidance on ‘strict protection’ 2020. The event was hosted by the President of the Intergroup, MEP Álvaro Amaro (EPP) andIntergroup Vice-Presidents MEP Juan Ignacio Zoido (European People's Party) and MEP Elsi Katainen (Renew Europe). Next steps in the EU’s policy framework on large carnivores and the related challenges and solutions towards improving coexistence were discussed from the perspectives of different stakeholders.

The intergroup also held a webinar on the F2F Strategy on 29 September as well as on the next EU Forest Strategy on 27 October.

As part of their work on assessing regional platforms, the EU Platform Secretariat sent out a questionnaire to different regional platforms including the Swedish Wildlife Management Delegations. The questionnaire was completed and data was analysed and presented in two reports focusing on 1) the comparison between responses of participants in EU-Project platforms and participants in external platforms, and on 2) the Swedish Wildlife Management Delegations. The reports are currently being finalized.

A webinar is planned to take place in early 2021 to provide feedback to Swedish participants of the survey and present the results so far. The webinar will also provide the overall context of participatory management of large carnivores in Sweden as well as lessons-learnt and experiences from other regional platforms in Europe.

The intergroup will organise an online conference co-hosted by ELO on 8 December on farming for biodiversity with regard to the EU’s Green Deal and the recent State of Nature in the EU report as well as the latest Court of auditors’ study on Biodiversity on Farmland. Registration and more information can be found here.

This conference which was originally planned for April 2020 will now take place in September 2021, or March 2022 in Oxford, UK (dates TBC). It aims at enhancing dialogue and collaboration on human-wildlife conflicts across sectors and disciplines as a global priority in biodiversity conservation, and at promoting ways to reduce and manage these conflicts. Members of the EU Platform and the Secretariat will participate in the exchange and present the work carried out during the previous year addressing regional stakeholder platforms, their members’ interactions and expectations in the context of promoting coexistence.

This conference is planned to take place from 20 – 23 September in Wageningen with the theme of ‘sharing landscapes’ has been postponed until the autumn of 2022.

Two protected areas, a nature park in Italy (Prealpi Giulie) and an adjacent national park in Slovenia (Triglav) have implemented a participatory decision-making process to inform about transboundary bear management in the Transboundary Ecoregion of the Julian Alps along the Slovenian-Italian border. Both parks have received EUROPARC’s formal certification as "EUROPARC Transboundary Area" and comprise a transboundary pilot region for ecological connectivity under the Alpine Convention. The decision-making process implemented involves several steps referred to as PrOACT (Problem framing, Objectives, Alternative strategies, Consequences, and Tradeoffs). This involved coming up with a long-list of concerns and wishes and narrowing them down to three ultimate objectives to be achieved. The project led to a joint agreement for allocation of resources (money & staff time) toward satisfying and improving engagement of all stakeholders concerned about brown bears in the Transboundary Julian Alps Ecoregion. Actions will be implemented through jointly funded park projects from 2017-2026. The actions agreed upon are expected to maintain or increase the carrying capacity of brown bears within and beyond the transboundary area by up to 150% of the current level, maintain sustainable agriculture by supporting small farms and minimize conflicts among stakeholder groups.

Further information about this case study is available here.