9-10 March 2007

Participation of the State Institute for Nature Protection in the International Symposium "Large Carnivores and Agriculture - Comparing Experiences across Italy and Europe"

The international symposium "Large Carnivores and Agriculture - Comparing Experiences across Italy and Europe" organized by the staff of the LIFE-COEX project "Improving Coexistence of Large Carnivores and Agriculture in Southern Europe"  took place in Assisi, Italy from 9-10 March 2007.

The symposium was attended by experts from various European countries and Italy dealing with the conservation of large carnivores, including the representatives of Italian provinces, livestock breeders' associations, veterinarian services, etc. The discussions mostly focused on damage caused to livestock and its prevention. The participants presented diverse methodologies of the damage causer assessment and damage compensation models applied in some of the Italian provinces and other European countries, as well as numerous donation programmes for livestock guardian dogs and electric fences as measures to prevent damage.

The subject was also the human dimension of the large carnivore management, public opinion surveys, the impact of mass media on decision-making in management and the ways of handling unusual situations that require an emergency response following the example of the brown bear emergency response team in Croatia.

At the symposium the State Institute for Nature Protection presented a poster "Preventing Damage to Livestock in Regions of Croatia Inhabited by Large Carnivores", which, in addition to a summarized statistic processing of data on livestock damage, also presented a livestock guardian dog and its role in guarding the livestock and the course and results of livestock guardian dog and electric fences donation programmes.

With three photographs the Institute also took part in the competition for the best photo entitled "The Conflict between Agriculture and Large Carnivores" and distributed a large number of information and educational printed material on large carnivores in Croatia.