The northern Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige is gearing up for a three-day conference on living with brown bears in an effort to stem the fears of local residents who are increasingly likely to find themselves face to face with the animals.
The course will kick off on Friday at the Prato Stelvio National Park, one area where bears have been spotted in recent years following conservation efforts to reintroduce the animals into Italy's Alpine regions.
''Bears are appearing more and more frequently, worrying villagers and farmers,'' said organisers at the Bolzano Provincial Nature Department.
''It's been a long time since we've lived with bears and they tend to divide public opinion, which is why we want to provide more information on these animals and especially on how people can live side by side with them,'' they added.
A panel of experts from other European countries where bears and men manage to co-exist peacefully will be on hand to answer questions from the public, organisers said.
The reintroduction of brown bears into the Italian border regions has hit several recent setbacks, partly because Italy has no formal agreement with surrounding countries about what to do when roaming animals cause trouble.
An Italian bear called JJ3 made the news last month when he was shot after wandering into Switzerland, where authorities had labelled him ''problematic'' because he showed no fear of humans.
His more famous brother Bruno was also shot when he turned up in Bavaria and started helping himself to sheep and chickens in June 2006.
Both bears were born in Italy's Adamello-Brenta national park to a female brown bear who was among ten animals imported from Slovenia to Trentino as part of the ''Life Ursus'' conservation project to repopulate the area.
MARSICAN BEAR NOT POISONED.
Forestry chiefs running another project to bring the Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus) back to the central Italian Apennine mountains have said that a six-year-old female bear found dead earlier this month was not poisoned as had been feared.
An autopsy on the animal who lived in the Abruzzo National Park suggested she may have died protecting her cubs from a male bear.
Three bears died in the park in autumn last year after being poisoned with a powerful fungicide.
The endangered species is found exclusively in the Apennine range.
According to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) between 40 and 45 of the animals currently survive in the wild.
