In the Bear-Smart Communities of the Central Apennines, an educational initiative has begun to raise awareness among children and teenagers about human-bear coexistence.

In Pettorano sul Gizio, the Bear Smart Community Genzana will be able to boast of having a unique, original place that is able to connect natural and human history in a permanent exhibition that will surprise everyone!

The aim of the LIFE Bear-Smart Corridors initiative is to enhance human-bear coexistence in Italy, Greece, and further afield. The initiative’s well-attended first two public meetings, in the towns of Pettorano sul Gizio and Vastogirardi in the Central Apennines rewilding landscape, proved very positive and educational events.

A high participation of people characterized the first public event of the LIFE Bear-Smart Corridors in the Bear Smart Community Genzana, the first to be established in Italy 8 years ago.

Recently, a local news website relating to the Gran Sasso area published a letter from one of its readers without first verifying the veracity of the content and, then, selecting the correct information. Since this letter concerns the presence of specimens of the Marsican brown bear in the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, many have questioned whether it could undermine the delicate process of peaceful coexistence between the local communities and the bear in the newly expanding territories of the species, which is also carrying out through the LIFE Bear-Smart Corridors initiative.

The LIFE Bear-Smart Corridors project gets underway to meet the communities and ask: “Is it possible to live in an area where bears also live? And how?”

In the coexistence corridor between the Monte Genzana Alto Gizio Nature Reserve and the Maiella National Park, Rewilding Apennines and the entrepreneur Eugenio Vitto Massei have embarked on a new collaboration aimed at connecting people to nature and involving them in rewilding actions in the central Apennines.

Within the LIFE Bear-Smart Corridors initiative, some partners had the idea to spread the coexistence best practices with the bear through the promotion of high-quality food products from the Central Apennines, all encased within the Bear-Smart Box.

For a week the Central Apennines become the inspirational scenario for numerous European organizations that deal with rewilding and want to grow and work together.

When nature inspires our lives, stories of coexistence, both physical and mental, can born.