Many inhabited centres and rural houses in the Cantabrian mountain range are surrounded by fruit trees for their own consumption, such as cherry, plum, apple or pear trees, which throughout the summer become an attraction for wildlife, including brown bears. Chicken coops and feeding troughs for livestock can also be an attraction, especially in more isolated houses in the bush.
Keeping bears away from inhabited areas is the objective of the LIFE Human-Bear Coex project, which runs until December 2027 and is led by the nine municipalities with the highest density of bears in Spain (six in Asturias and three in León) together with the Brown Bear Foundation (FOP), with the support of the regional administrations and funding from the European Union.
Within the framework of the project, a team of specialists from the FOP is working to protect domestic animal facilities, apiaries and other elements of attraction in inhabited areas and their surroundings, as well as placing deterrent bear detectors in fruit trees that are persistently visited by the plant-eating animals. We are working to:
> Install 200 electrified fences and other appropriate means of protection at domestic animals facilities and other attractants.
> Install 90 motion-sensor-activated bear detectors on fruit trees or other attractants.
The latter devices are programmed to emit lights, ultrasound and noises as a bear approaches, which change to make it more difficult for the animals to get used to. Although not foolproof, some of the tests carried out so far have been successful. Their effectiveness can be evaluated thanks to the installation of camera traps, and their suitability for different scenarios and variables, such as the age of the bears, will be assessed.
Both the electrified fences and the detector-scarers will be installed throughout the project, providing a rapid response to problematic situations, always in collaboration with the local population.
In addition to working to prevent damage to fruit trees in inhabited areas and to keep bears away, the LIFE Human-Bear Coex project will plant 50,000 native fruit trees in 250 patches, far from villages, to generate more food resources for bears in the bush. These plantations, together with other preventive actions such as clearing vegetation around the villages and on roads, will be carried out by teams of local workers, hired by the project’s partner municipalities.