Good practice in large carnivore conservation and management

The EU Platform on Coexistence between People and Large Carnivores is a grouping of stakeholder representatives on the EU level which was established, with the support of the European Commission in 2014. The mission of Platform members focuses on mitigating human-carnivore conflicts and promoting stakeholder collaboration. The European Commission funds a Secretariat to support the Platform members, with the important task, among others, of documenting case studies demonstrating good practice in large carnivore conservation and management. The present chapter presents this task and its main results, showcasing examples of good practice in selected locations across Europe, and discussing implications and recommendations for large carnivore conservation and management. Our findings indicate that good practice cannot be conceptualized as a flawless trajectory of intended and fully anticipated events and outcomes, but rather as stakeholder joint actions and effective adaptation to address the difficulties and barriers to implementation which emerge at the local level and with the involvement of a certain constellation of stakeholder interests. The experience gathered and analysed from the case studies across Europe, reflects the potential for the deliberation and consultation processes to nurture social learning and implies that good working relationships among stakeholders are a valuable resource in themselves. The mixed-motive perspective we have employed in this research may be replicated by stakeholders in local stakeholder platforms to monitor their interactions and plan their future cooperation in a structured manner.