Guidelines for population level management plans for large carnivores

Funding: European Commission.

Contract period: January 2006 - July 2007.

Awarded to: The LCIE via IEA (Italy), KORA (Switzerland), NINA (Norway) & Callisto (Greece).

Coordinator: Valeria Salvatori, IEA.

Background

Large carnivores move over very large areas - each individual may need hundreds, or in some cases, thousands, of square kilometers of habitat. As a result a whole population of large carnivores may require many tens or hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of habitat. On a continent like Europe this implies that large carnivore populations span several countries. For example, both the Carpathian and Dinaric - Pindos populations of bears, wolves and lynx span 8 countries each. Individually, few countries have the possibility to conserve viable populations of these wide ranging species. Only by cooperating on the population level can countries hope to conserve large carnivores in the long term. This project is intended to provide technical support for the European Commission as they try and introduce this new approach to large carnivore management.

Scope of the project

The project focuses on Eurasian lynx, brown bear, wolves and wolverines, and in the whole of Europe west of 35^oE (approximately Moscow).

Project goals

Species fact sheets: Our knowledge of large carnivores is increasing all the time, both in terms of our understanding of their ecology and in their interaction with humans. As a result there is a continual need to provide updated, state-of-the-art summaries of our knowledge about large carnivores in Europe. These fact sheets will summarise details of the species' ecology and provide details on the conservation status throughout Europe.

Update species distribution maps. The distribution of these species is also very dynamic. In some areas they are expanding as a result of natural expansion (e.g. wolves in France, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia) or reintroduction (bears in the French Pyrenees), while in other areas hunting or lethal control creates a dynamic distribution (e.g. wolves in Estonia, Eurasian lynx and wolverines in Norway). In other areas our level of knowledge is increasing, and former blank spots are being filled in (e.g. some regions of the western Balkans). This section of the project will summarise existing knowledge of large carnivore distribution, and will produce maps for each species on a 10x10km scale for all of Europe. Developing a good conceptual understanding of what populations and finding ways to operationalise these concepts will be important tasks.

Principles for large carnivore management. During the last 30 years during which large carnivore conservation has become established as a management goal throughout Europe we have gained considerable experience at identifying the management practices that foster coexistence, and those that generate conflicts. This knowledge includes both the results of recent scientific studies and of the considerable experience accumulated by wildlife managers and conservationists engaged in the practical tasks of managing large carnivores. One thing that we learnt is that there is no magic bullet solution to all problems. Strategies that work in some areas, do not work in others. However, there are some general principles, and in this section of the project we aim to condense the considerable experience of the LCIE's members into a series of policy support statements that elaborate good management practices for a range of issues.

Guidelines for population level management. In this section we will make recommendations about to go about achieving transboundary, population level management for the large carnivores. We will make recommendations about how to operationalise the Favourable Conservation Status concept for large carnivores, taking into account their specific biology and the issues that make their conservation particularly challenging. We will also outline a framework for the best process that can be used to develop population level management plans, and provide a framework for what such plan should contain.

Products. The products will consist of;

● An Online Information System for each species, similar to the already existing system for Eurasian lynx (ELOIS). These will summarise the fact sheet and distribution data.

● A development of this website to include more results.

● A printed report summarsing the guidelines and the background materials.

● A popular publication summarising the results.

● A scientific manuscript.

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