Preventive measures and bear conservation in Slovakia

Introduction

This project addresses the need for non-lethal measures to reduce conflicts between brown bears (Ursus arctos) and people to facilitate their co-existence in Slovakia. The main focus is on improving the management of food and waste in areas with bears. The aim is to improve awareness of waste management in relation to bears and bear safety and how use of preventive measures can reduce bear-human conflicts and thus contribute to long-term conservation of bears by reducing the need, whether real or perceived, for killing of bears. The project has two concurrently running components: practical and educational. The practical component demonstrates the implementation of improved systems of waste storage and management in areas that have recently experienced problems with human habituated and food-conditioned bears as well as showing what other practical measures can be taken to discourage bears from visiting hotels, camp sites and cottages. The educational programme is designed to increase the public’s knowledge of bears and to raise awareness of the practical measures being implemented.

Activities and outputs

Bins

Within The B.E.A.R.S. Project (Bear Education, Awareness and Research in Slovakia), since 2003 the Slovak Wildlife Society has actively promoted non-lethal preventive measures as effective solutions to bear-human conflicts. With funding from Alertis beginning in 2005, SWS worked with a local manufacturer to develop special waste bins, inspired by designs already used successfully in North America. Testing with both wild and captive bears in 2007 demonstrated that the new design is bear-proof. Subsequently three of these bins were installed: at Hrebienok in the Tatras National Park, in Demänovská Valley in the Low Tatras National Park and near Staré Hory, between the Low Tatras and Veľká Fatra National Parks.

Spray

We imported the first 30 cans of bear spray from the USA (Counter Assault® Grizzly Tough Pepper Spray) in April 2008 and sold them by the following winter. In February 2009 we imported another 50 cans which also took several months to sell out but the next shipment of 50 cans imported in April 2010 had gone within 3 months (probably influenced by a highly publicised bear attack on a forest worker in the Tatra Mountains) and so we have ordered 100 more. Funding from EAZA/Alertis gave us the capital to start the sales cycle, which should now be financially self-sustaining, and also provided staff time to deal with orders while keeping down costs to the public. After initially sceptical reactions from some environmentalists and hunters it does seem that there is considerable demand for this product, which may also have an application in discouraging bears’ nuisance behaviour.

Publicity and education materials

Work is advanced on several new awareness-raising items including a poster and a series of information sheets for different interest groups (residents, tourists, hunters, foresters, mushroom pickers etc.).

Monitoring and research

A total of 111 bear scats (faeces) were collected in 2009 for a long-term analysis of diet (begun in 2001) and coordinates of bear sign recorded using a GPS. As well as fieldwork we also monitored the content of press reports, mainly newspaper and magazine articles as well as television news items, for coverage of bears.

Website

Between February and July 2010 the project website (www.medvede.sk) received 142,730 unique visits. It has been regularly updated throughout the project period and an updated design for the layout, with improved content and new sections, is close to completion.

Competition

We were thrilled that our 2009 art and literature competition, the sixth we have organised so far received a record number of entries: a total of more than 1,900 entries from 133 schools in 51 of Slovakia’s districts (72%) took part. The theme for this year’s competition, “What do bears dream about?”, definitely appealed to the children’s imagination. Apparently, bears most often dream of honey, of cubs or of rich supplies of forest fruit for the winter, but some also dream about taking a whole container of rubbish into their dens for the winter!

Preliminary conclusions

Funding provided by EAZA/Alertis has enabled us to realise a variety of education and awareness-raising materials and activities from local to national levels. These have been well received by those involved and succeeded in getting across their intended messages, primarily to improve knowledge of bears and bear safety, particularly non-lethal preventive measures as alternatives to hunting.

However, we have encountered several obstacles to the more widespread application of effective preventive measures. These are:

• scepticism that the methods will work;
• lack of motivation or incentive to use them;
• traditional focus on hunting;
• low awareness;
• disinformation (particularly sensationalised media reporting);
• inactivity of some authorities;

but not necessarily a financial problem.

The continued emphasis of the media and the hunting lobby on conflicts has often been difficult to counter at a broader scale. Likewise, some environmentalists efforts to block hunting have also kept the focus away from finding alternative solutions to the conflicts, and this situation threatens to become even more entrenched as the State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic has chosen to focus its efforts on counting animals rather than solving problems. We feel that in order to have a chance of influencing the balance of opinion of the public, stakeholders and decision-makers, a higher-profile initiative is required. A Bear Centre, or Large Carnivore Centre, combining permanent, interactive displays and changing exhibitions with a facility for captive animals (part sanctuary, part rehabilitation centre), could become a major visitor attraction and focal point for media interest as well as hosting school groups, thus enabling us to reach a far wider audience and on a longer-term basis. Other desirable work for the next phase would be to work with authorities to establish a Bear Emergency Team and to use human dimensions work (semi-structured interviews, questionnaire surveys, facilitated workshop approach) to better understand the barriers to more widespread update of preventive measures in order to overcome these obstacles.

Visit the Bears of Slovakia website www.medvede.sk