04/09/2026
In Pettorano Sul Gizio, local people are getting used to living alongside bears. So, what does it take to see unfamiliar wild animals not as a threat, but as a neighbour?
In Episode 10 of At the Edge – Time to Get Smart?, I ask Angela Tavone, Communications Manager at Rewilding Apennines, what the ingredients are for successful coexistence.
She told me:
1. Time. Changing attitudes doesn’t happen overnight.
2. People need to be open to living alongside wildlife.
3. People need to be willing to question existing cultural norms and ask whether they still have a future.
This last point is perhaps the most challenging. As humans, we naturally cling to what feels familiar and ‘normal’. Asking a rural community to accommodate bears – an animal some may see as an inconvenience imposed upon them – requires people to question deeply held assumptions about what belongs in a landscape, and what doesn’t.
But perhaps that is where coexistence really begins: not with everyone suddenly embracing wildlife, but with a willingness to question what we have always taken for granted and change how we see ourselves, and our place within the natural world.
