Coexistence at the top of the food chain: anthropogenic risk primarily drives brown bear space use and resource selection in the Italian Alps

The Italian Alps are among the most anthropized mountain areas in the world. In a multi-use landscape where a variety of activities such as farming, livestock herding, hunting, and outdoor recreation take place, large mammals must adjust their behavior to carry out their daily activities. The brown bear, the largest carnivore in the Alps, was recently rescued from near extinction and must now find its place in a complex, human-dominated landscape. In this study, we use individual-based movement, activity and trait information (spanning from 2006 to 2019) to assess multi-scale behavioral decisions related to the perception of risk, the availability of habitat, and the proximity of food resources. Perceived risk from human activities was found to influence spatial and temporal patterns of selection across scales more than other attributes. Spatially, brown bears reduced risk exposure when selecting for home ranges and resources within those ranges by avoiding humans, at the cost of limiting their selection of high-quality habitats and high-calorie food sources. Temporally, intraspecific competition was identified as the main determinant of activity patterns and daily movement length over the years, while human disturbance had a major effect on movement behavior on a daily (day vs. night) scale. Brown bears in the Alps are slowly recovering, but competition for space with humans, lack of habitat connectivity, and human-caused mortality are hindering their recovery and the formation of a viable metapopulation throughout the Alps. In the increasingly crowded Alps, sustainable long-term coexistence can be achieved only if both bears and humans adjust their behaviors.