Project Overview
Project overview
SESCARNIVORE is an interdisciplinary research project aimed at rethinking how humans and large carnivores coexist in increasingly shared landscapes. While conservation efforts have helped species like the brown bear, wolf, and lynx recover across Europe, their presence in human-modified environments creates new tensions (ecological, social, and political). Existing frameworks are often fragmented, focusing either on biology or social dynamics, but rarely both. SESCARNIVORE bridges this gap by developing a social-ecological niche theory, combining ecological insight with human values, governance, and land-use practices to foster coexistence.
Specific Objectives
Identify SES features facilitating Human–Large Carnivore Coexistence (European Perspective)
We will conduct a comprehensive literature review and distribute expert surveys across Europe to identify key Social-Ecological System (SES) features, such as habitat structure, species behaviour, governance frameworks, and cultural values, that influence human-large carnivore coexistence. This will lay the foundation for a pan-European understanding of opportunities and barriers to coexistence. This objective will yield general understanding, with little local, contextual applicability
Map local social-ecological dynamics across Romanian regions
We will implement participatory systems-mapping workshops in diverse Romanian landscapes, ranging from carnivore-present to carnivore-absent and recolonizing areas. These activities aim to elicit local knowledge, lived experiences, and region-specific dynamics, enriching the broader SES framework with grounded, place-based insights. This objective will yield more contextual understanding for managing human-carnivore coexistence, through the identification of localized drivers, values, and practices that shape interactions, thereby enabling culturally sensitive and ecologically viable strategies to be developed and tested
Test and apply the SES framework to develop a bear sensitive urban development plan
This objective targets the local, the nuanced, and the highly contextual dimensions of human-large carnivore coexistence. In close partnership with local institutions, we will co-design and implement field research, and based on the findings, collaboratively develop a bear-sensitive Urban Development Plan. This process will integrate ecological assessments, stakeholder engagement, and collaboration with urban planners. The resulting plan will serve as a practical and transferable model for fostering coexistence in other conflict-prone peri-urban regions.