animals Article Cost of Coexisting with a Relict Large Carnivore Population: Impact of Apennine Brown Bears, 2005–2015 Andrea Galluzzi 1 , Valerio Donfrancesco 2 , Gianluca Mastrantonio 3 , Cinzia Sulli 4 and Paolo Ciucci 1, *   Citation: Galluzzi, A.; Donfrancesco, V.; Mastrantonio, G.; Sulli, C.; Ciucci, P. Cost of Coexisting with a Relict Large Carnivore Population: Impact of Apennine Brown Bears, 2005–2015. Animals 2021, 11, 1453. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ani11051453 Academic Editor: Pia Lucidi Received: 5 May 2021 Accepted: 15 May 2021 Published: 19 May 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Biology and Biotechnologies, University of Rome La Sapienza, 00185 Rome, Italy; andrea.galluzzi@hotmail.com 2 Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK; vd308@cam.ac.uk 3 Department of Mathematics (DISMA), Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy; gianluca.mastrantonio@polito.it 4 Scientific Service, Abruzzo Lazio and Molise National Park, 67032 Pescasseroli, Italy; cinzia.sulli@parcoabruzzo.it * Correspondence: paolo.ciucci@uniroma1.it Simple Summary: Efficiently addressing human-large carnivore conflicts is a conservation issue of increasing relevance, especially in human-dominated landscapes where impact on rural economies generates negative attitudes towards large carnivores and their conservation. We quantified pat- terns of bear impact on farms and the costs of compensation from 2005 to 2015 in the Abruzzo Lazio and Molise National Park (central Italy), an historical stronghold of the relict and highly imperiled Apennine brown bear population, where the park authority has been adopting conflict management approaches since the 1960s. Although the compensation program is rather costly (1490 ± 589 €/bear/year), the park policy has been increasingly integrated with prevention incen- tives, managing to effectively avert further increases in bear damages during the study period. Concurrently, local residents generally share a positive attitude towards bears, and the number of illegally killed bears decreased in the last decade. Despite this, our findings indicate there is still room for improvement in local conflict management, and that a more efficient use of conservation funds would benefit from increased monitoring, integrated prevention, conditional compensation, and participatory processes. Lessons learned from areas of historical coexistence between humans and large carnivores provide critical insights to design successful management strategies in areas of recent and future recolonisation by large carnivores. Abstract: Human-carnivore conflicts are a major conservation issue. As bears are expanding their range in Europe’s human-modified landscapes, it is increasingly important to understand, prevent, and address human-bear conflicts and evaluate mitigation strategies in areas of historical coexis- tence. Based on verified claims, we assessed costs, patterns, and drivers of bear damages in the relict Apennine brown bear population in the Abruzzo Lazio and Molise National Park (PNALM), central Italy. During 2005–2015, 203 ± 71 (SD) damage events were verified annually, equivalent to 75,987 ± 30,038 €/year paid for compensation. Most damages occurred in summer and fall, with livestock depredation, especially sheep and cattle calves, prevailing over other types of damages, with apiaries ranking second in costs of compensation. Transhumant livestock owners were less impacted than residential ones, and farms that adopted prevention measures loaned from the PNALM were less susceptible to bear damages. Livestock farms chronically damaged by bears represented 8 ± 3% of those annually impacted, corresponding to 24 ± 6% of compensation costs. Further improvements in the conflict mitigation policy adopted by the PNALM include integrated prevention, conditional compensation, and participatory processes. We discuss the implications of our study for Human-bear coexistence in broader contexts. Keywords: human-carnivore coexistence; compensation costs; Human-bear conflict; human-dominated landscape; Italy; large carnivores; Ursus arctos Animals 2021, 11, 1453. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11051453 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/animals