2021 Volume 61 Issue 2 Pages 275-284
As human-dominated lands expand, wide-ranging large carnivores increasingly occupy the same lands as people, which has become a worldwide issue. It is increasingly challenging to conserve wildlife populations and mitigate human-wildlife conflict simultaneously. To foster coexistence with bear species, the reduction of human-bear encounters and the frequent bear occurrence in human-dominated lands should be addressed first. Understanding how bears use anthropogenic landscape components and identifying factors that influence the frequency of bear occurrence are critical for developing long-term solutions. By reviewing previous studies, I focused on woodland patches, an open matrix of agricultural lands and settlements, riparian forests, and roads to explore how bears used and selected such anthropogenic lands as a part of their habitat. I also provide a case study of habitat selection by Asiatic black bears around villages and farmlands on foothills in the central Japan Alps to help understand the situation in detail. By synthesizing biological and ecological hypotheses to explain the factors behind increased bear use of human-dominated lands, I identify the most plausible explanation in the case of Asiatic black bears and suggest future directions for research and management implications to solve this issue and enable long-term coexistence with large, elusive carnivores.
