Data and codes from: Individuality matters in human-wildlife conflicts: patterns and fraction of damage-making brown bears in the North-eastern Carpathians ...

• Main Authors: Berezowska-Cnota, Teresa, Konopiński, Maciej K., Bartoń, Kamil, Bautista, Carlos, Revilla, Eloy, Naves, Javier, Aleksandra, Biedrzycka, Fedyń, Hubert, Fernández, Néstor, Jastrzębski, Tomasz, Pirga, Bartosz, Viota, Maria, Wojtas, Zenon, Selva, Nuria
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2023
• Subjects: brown bear; human-wildlife coexistence; individuality; non-invasive genetic sampling; population size estimation; problem individuals; spatially explicit capture-recapture; wildlife damage; FOS Biological sciences; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.931zcrjqf; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.931zcrjqf

Effective, evidence-based management is required to ensure long-term coexistence between people and wildlife in an increasingly humanised world. Although behavioural individuality is recognised as a key factor affecting evolutionary and ecological processes, it has rarely been explicitly assessed in relation to human-wildlife conflicts. The ‘problem individuals’ paradigm states that some conspecifics within a given population have a disproportionately large contribution to conflicts. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have so far systematically tested this assumption in large carnivores. Here, we investigated the variation in conflict behaviour among brown bears Ursus arctos within the population inhabiting the Polish Eastern Carpathians. We inspected all sites notified as damaged by bears in 2014-2017 to determine the number and sex of the individuals involved. We conducted systematic non-invasive genetic sampling to estimate the size of the local population by spatially explicit capture-recapture ... : These files contain processed data and R-code to (1) estimate brown bear population density in the Polish Eastern Carpathians, for both sexes, using a spatially explicit capture-recapture model and model selection; (2) estimate probability density of individuals who are occasional and repetitive damage-makers, by mixture distribution models. The raw data were collected through bear damage inspections and systematic non-invasive genetic sampling in the study area. The included R code generates statistics and working plots. Details on data processing and analysis can be found in the original publication and accompanying Electronic Supplementary Materials. ...