Brown bear (Ursus arctos) is Slovenian largest beast, and has long been challenging to manage. Humans have always been in awe of bears with which they have had numerous conflicts. In 2004, Slovenia banned carrion feeding sites, and at the time some experts thought this would increase the conflicts between humans and bears. The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether it would be sensible to re-establish carrion feeding sites. Therefore, we carried out a feeding experiment in the area with high bear density and continuous bear presence. We set and left photo traps at two feeding sites owned by the hunting families of Cerknica and Grahovo, and investigated for two seasons whether carrion affects bear visits to the sites. We established that it does, however, the effect is dependent of the season and year. Generally speaking, the carrion feeding site was much better visited than the one which only offered maize. The type of foodstuffs used (plant-based fodder or fodder mixed with carrion) also affects the varied times of visits to the site during the day. The results obtained within this graduate thesis will be useful to hunters during bear culling as they provide an insight into when and in which time of the year bears are likely to visit the carrion feeding sites or feeding sites with maize.
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