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The unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of living with wildlife is one of the causes of human-carnivore conflicts. The existence of large carnivores is valued globally, but the costs of damages and management impacts human residents. The Apennine brown bear is endemic of central Italy and, besides its ecological value, it can attract tourists in search of nature and wilderness. The Advertising Value Equivalent of the bears' appearances in the national newspaper and on television from 2015 to 2020 was used to calculate the economic value of this flagship species as a destination image. The 11 million Euro of Advertising Value Equivalent estimated largely exceeded the amount of reimbursements sustained by the Park to manage this carnivore in the same period. This evaluation of cultural value could be used to highlight the economic benefits provided by the bear and contribute to the discussions with managers and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rubbing of trees by bears is an example of scent-marking that has been studied only in a limited number of bear species in the world. Our study analyzes the marking behavior of the European brown bear (Ursus arctos), based on filming by remote cameras placed in front of 25 rub trees in the central Italian Alps during 2012 to 2014. We obtained 546 videos of bears from a sampling effort of 9,302 camera-days. The bears captured in the videos were classified according to age and sex, and type and duration of each behavior was recorded. The data allowed us to assess temporal patterns of rubbing behavior and differences within sex, age, and among individuals. Rubbing was performed significantly more by adult males, with a peak during the breeding season. Adult males also used a variety of positions to mark the trees as compared with the other sex-age classes. Rubbing also was observed during the nonbreeding season, but with lower frequency, whereas investigation of rub trees was performed by bears of all ages and sexes throughout the seasons. The only 3 female bears that rubbed the trees were recorded in autumn, outside the breeding season. The results showed that scent-marking triggered a response in individuals that subsequently passed by the same rub tree; in 62% of the cases, the second bear either rubbed or investigated the tree, regardless of the time since the passage of the first bear. Our results supported the hypothesis that tree-rubbing during the breeding season is a means of communication, as already documented for brown bears and American black bears (U. americanus) in North America, but the function of this display outside the breeding season remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The names given to places are a legacy of the past distribution of animal and plant species. The hypothesis tested in this work is that the density of toponyms can be used to predict the range of two large and charismatic species over time: the wolf and the brown bear in Italy. Kernel density maps of the toponyms were created and different thresholds of density were overlapped with the present and the historical ranges for both species. The density level maps were tested with the Kappa statistics against available historical ranges for both species. The pattern of the density in toponyms overlapped with the pattern of contraction and expansion reported in literature for both species over time. The minimum historical distributions of wolves and brown bears occurred at the highest densities of toponyms (95% isopleth value) and, overall, the various kernels thresholds showed an excellent agreement with the historical maps with an average Kappa of 0.84 ± 0.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans profoundly affect animal distributions by directly competing for space, not only transforming, but actively using their habitat. Anthropogenic disturbance is usually measured via structural proxies such as infrastructure and land use that overlook the impact of human presence, or functional disturbance. In this study, we propose a methodology unifying two paradigms, human mobility and animal movement, to fill this gap. We developed a novel spatially-explicit index of anthropic disturbance, the Cumulative Outdoor activity Index (COI), and validated it with ground truth observations derived from camera trapping (r = +0.63, p < 0.001). Building on previous work from Peters et al. (2015, Biol. Cons. 186, 123–133) on a Critically Endangered brown bear population in the Alps, we used Resource Selection Analysis to assess the influence of different forms of anthropogenic disturbance on the relative probability of habitat selection. The intensity of COI provided an effective measure of functional anthropogenic disturbance, and it outperformed all alternative and commonly-used proxies of structural disturbance in predicting bear habitat use. Our predictions suggest that brown bear shrinks its ecological niche as a consequence of intense human use of otherwise suitable habitat. These constraints may limit the potential range expansion of bears to establish a viable Alpine-Dinaric metapopulation. Conclusive conservation and future land use planning towards human-wildlife coexistence should account for the functional presence of humans on the landscape. The proposed COI could help determine where mitigation measures should be enforced. • Structural anthropic disturbance underestimates human-wildlife competition for space. • We developed the Cumulative Outdoor activity Index (COI) based on human mobility data. • COI best predicted brown bear space use in a reintroduced endangered population. • Predictions indicate limits for the establishment of an Alpine bear metapopulation. • COI can identify where to enforce human mobility restrictions for conservation purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]