This page gives an overview of successful past and ongoing LIFE projects with a focus on one or more large carnivore species of Europe. For additional information visit the LIFE Public Database (insert "wolf", "brown bear", "lynx", "wolverine" in search bar).
Recently launched projects
- Cooperate with stakeholders to increase the use of conflict mitigation measures
- Increase knowledge of damage officials
- Develop education materials on coexistence and conflict prevention to be used in formal and informal learning environment
- Increase the abundance of wild prey and improve habitat conditions for Iberian wolf and Iberian lynx south of the Douro River
- Promote coexistence with rural communities and increase knowledge on the assessment of damage prevention and detection of environmental crime
- Identify patterns and causes of confident wolf behaviour and raise awareness about the issue in local communities in eight countries across the EU
- Enable authorities and local communities to adequately manage critical situations where wildlife approach humans in urban and peri-urban areas
- Establish emergency teams
Ongoing projects
- Improve human-bear coexistence in 4 National Parks of South Europe
- Deal with bear approaches in residential areas and implement effective measures to prevent damage, such as electric fences, bear-proof refuse containers and livestock guarding dogs
- Minimize illegal practices such as the use of poisoned baits
- Overcome the current fragmented practices of wolf management and achieve an overall population-level management
- Explore what drives conflict "hot-spots" and develop solutions
- Explore public attitudes towards wolves, and use this for educational and communication activities to enhance knowledge on wolves
- Create a Wilderness Reserve in the Southern Carpathian Mountains, Romania
- Operate a system of human-wildlife conflict prevention and mitigation with rapid intervention teams
- Implement a modern, evidence-based wildlife monitoring system based on non-invasive methods
- Reduce any negative impact associated with the presence of wolves, such as fears, concerns and any losses of dogs and domestic animals
- Increase the acceptability of wolves in society
- Develop tools for wolf population management, such as preventing the illegal killing of wolves
- Implement livestock protection to actively support human-livestock-wildlife coexistence
- Raise acceptance about livestock protection among livestock owners, youth and general public, and train owners in livestock protection
- Teach tourism managers how to inform visitors about livestock protection
- Improve the adaptability of the brown bear to climate change in the Cantabrian Mountains with an ecosystem-based approach
- Improve key food resources by planting or improving small forests of autochthonous species
- Provide advice and guidance for winter activities in bear areas to prevent conflicts
Create a genetically and demographically functional Iberian Lynx metapopulation
- Maintain acceptable rates of non-natural mortality by safer road-crossings, agreements between landowners, hunters and farmers to avoid conflicts
- Ensure prey availability in the stepping-stones and in the incipient and new nuclei
- Replicate and adapt the Canadian Bear Smart Community concept in Italy and Greece
- Improve coexistence with bears by taking preventative measures and raising awareness in Bear Smart Communities
- Remove threats and improve conditions for bears in the coexistence corridors, with a focus on preserving natural food in the areas
Past projects
Prevent the extinction of the Dinaric – SE Alpine lynx population with translocations from the Carpathian Mountains (Romania, Slovakia)
- Improve connectivity with creation of a stepping stone lynx population in SE Alps
- Ensure broad public acceptance of lynx for long term conservation
- Promote conditions needed to support the viability of the Portuguese subpopulation of Iberian wolf south of the Douro river
- Reduce conflicts with the livestock sector, reduce poaching and human-caused fires in order to promote coexistence
- Increase the availability of wild prey for wolves
- Reduce the risk of traffic collisions with the target species - Marsican brown bear, Brown bear, Iberian lynx - wolf, through the installation of innovative road kill prevention tools
- Improve connectivity and favor movements for the target populations and increase the attention of drivers
Favour permanent settlement of bears in a new territory, the Serra do Courel (Lugo, Galicia)
- Guarantee connectivity between main bear reproductive nucleus in the western Cantabrian subpopulation and the Serra do Courel
- Increase information and awareness of local stakeholders and population to prevent and solve conflicts between bears and people
- Promote knowledge and awareness of the Natura 2000 network and the brown bear
- Contribute to avoid deterioration of natural habitats in Natura 2000 and to improve the unfavourable conservation status of brown bear
- Offer civic participation in the Natura 2000 management
Useful resources
- LIFE EUROLARGECARNIVORES: Overview of LIFE projects on large carnivores and their conflict-prevention measures
- European Commission - DG ENV: LIFE and human coexistence with large carnivores
- European Commission, Istituto di Ecologia Applicata, IUCN/SSC Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe: Large Carnivore Conservation and Management in Europe: The contribution of EC co-funded LIFE projects
- Investment of the EU LIFE programme in large carnivore conservation (1992-2020)