ABSTRACT
The recovery of populations of grey wolf (Canis lupus) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Central Europe offers an exceptional opportunity for studying people’s perception of large carnivores in changing conditions. In our study, we focused on attitudes of local people and visitors towards large carnivores in the West Carpathians. We showed that: (1) most respondents in both target groups had neutral or positive attitudes toward large carnivore occurrence; however, positive attitudes were significantly more often expressed by visitors, younger and more educated people, and people with no relation to livestock breeders; (2) the number of people with a negative disposition towards wolves decreased over time following the recovery of carnivore populations, but the number of people with a positive attitude did not change considerably; (3) the number of media articles expressing a purely positive perspective of wolves and bears increased over time, at the expense of articles expressing a purely or mainly negative perspective on wolves. The overall change in public perspective coincided with activities related to the prevention of conflicts, communication with media, and public awareness campaigns, as well as decreasing number of conflicts. People with neutral opinions could shift their position back to more negative views, should the extent of conflicts increase in the future.
