Bear harmony
Slovenians learn to live with more wild, furry neighbors
MARKOVEC, Slovenia — When he used to go hunting, Miha Mlakar would dream of killing a bear. But today, the 33-year-old from Slovenia makes his living watching the animals, peacefully, in their natural forest environment.
The turnaround to shooting bears with a camera, not a rifle, puts Mlakar, who runs bear observation tours, in step with wider efforts in the small Alpine nation to promote the coexistence of humans and bears.
Once on the verge of extinction, Slovenia’s brown bear population is booming, with the number roaming the sprawling forests having doubled in the last decade to around 1,000.
As a result, encounters with bears have increased — not that it seems to unduly worry everyone.
“If you run into a bear, you have to step back ... (But) there is no danger. The bear also prefers to move away,” said Ljubo Popovic, a 67-yearold pensioner who lives in the village of Banja Loka in the southern Kocevje region.
Lying an hour to the west, near Markovec village, Mlakar has built 20 hides in a remote patch of forest reachable only by off-road vehicle and takes visitors, including foreign tourists, to observe the bears.
“I cannot imagine this forest without bears. Bears make the forest wild and pristine, natural, like it was a few hundred or thousand years ago ... I feel a connection with bears,” he said.
Slovenian bears are even sought after abroad.
Between 1996 and 2006, eight Slovenian bears were released in the French Pyrenees, and France currently has a population of about 40, whose presence divides opinion in regions where they live.
In Slovenia, more than 60 percent of respondents in a 2016 survey carried out in areas where bears live said they were in favor of the bears’ presence, even if many also said they would like to see the numbers regulated.
“We have an average of one to three cases of physical contact between bears and humans per year,” said Rok Cerne, of the Slovenia Forest Service in charge of wildlife.
“Fortunately, we haven’t registered any serious incident over the last years,” he added, stressing they were “very active in preventive measures” such as removing food sources and using electric fences to protect flocks and cattle.
Learning simple rules, such as how to avoid startling bears and not feeding them, as well as efficient management like accurate counting to ascertain trends, is crucial for reducing conflicts with humans, said Mareike Brix, of German-based EuroNatur foundation.
“There is a risk, and there can be problems ... But it’s also great (to have bears). Wild nature has become so rare in Europe,” she said.