Brown bear welfare in landscapes shared with humans requires conflict mitigation approaches that protect bears from retaliation while enabling coexistence with livestock farming and human activities.
Brown bear welfare in human-shared landscapes is determined largely by whether effective non-lethal conflict prevention tools are deployed before bears develop livestock predation habits that lead to retaliation. Individual bears killed in retaliation for livestock depredation died from a welfare chain that began with inadequate predator deterrence rather than with the kill itself. Proactive deployment of electric fencing, livestock guardian dogs, and bear-aware farming practices prevents the conflict escalation that leads to lethal outcomes for bears. This makes agricultural extension work on predator deterrence simultaneously a livestock protection service and a direct animal welfare intervention for bears.