Plain Language Summary: Primary producers’ positions towards bears and bear conservation in Greece.

By Tasos Hovardas, Dimitris Bormpoudakis, and Giorgos Chatzinakos.

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Restoration of large carnivore populations across Europe in the last decades has resulted in escalation of human-carnivore conflict. In Greece, there is an ex-post compensation system for damages that large carnivores cause. The compensation system covers primary producers, that is, registered farmers, livestock breeders, and beekeepers. The European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development of the EU Common Agricultural Policy and several projects under the LIFE programme, the EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action, also support damage prevention measures.

Our study focused on bear conservation and management. We analyzed semi-structured interview data collected from 2015 to 2022 to explore how primary producers voiced their experiences and concerns for bears and bear conservation in the frame of LIFE projects implemented in Greece. Most interviewees validated the effectiveness of damage prevention methods but also noted several weaknesses in the existing compensation system, which were perceived as a lack of recognition of their labour.

Our findings showcase how primary producers adapted damage prevention methods to local contexts through a social experimentation process, which involved extra workload and gave rise to unexpected developments of human-bear interaction. These findings can add an insightful dimension to convivial bear conservation underlining its historical character and the need to tackle emerging challenges. There were quite a few instances, where interviewees, especially beekeepers, elaborated on human-bear interaction singling out the “cleverness” of the bear that both surprised them but also kept them alert in many ways. Such instances revealed that human-bear interactions were evolving and seemed to proceed as if bears attempted to outsmart primary producers’ use of damage prevention methods. The opposite was also true, especially when primary producers tried to adapt to bears’ new maneuvers and regain momentum and advantage in their interaction. Based on our findings, we recommend how existing policy instruments may not only target human-bear conflict but also promote innovation.