Valentina Ruco

Nadia Faure

Lucia Minola

Enrico Vettorazzo

Bernarda Bele

Meta Mavec

Aleksandra Majić Skrbinšek

Irene Gambini

Luca Alpestre

Roberto Sobrero

Jessica Trombin

Giacomo Ferraro

Lorenzo Vay

Chiara Ambrogini

Paola Violino

Paola Bertotto

Celva

Sarre, Vèrres Challand-Saint-Victor Christophe

Rachel Berzins

Clara Descamps

Léo Idczak

Eleonore Mourier

Manon Poncet

Erik Debarge

Thierry Gautruche

Elena Maselli

Marie Canut

Claire Crassous

Marie-France Leccia

Jean-Paul Mandine

Romain Lacoste

Stéphane Combeaud

Camille Cruz

Benoît Labigand

Florent Chapelut

Sophie Roux

Boris Opolka

Isabelle Lhommedet

Hervé Brosius

Mathieu Krammer Core Area

Ricardo N Simon

Hélène Fournet

Valentin Mege

Theresa Walter

Felix Knauer

000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1

Discussion and conclusion

List of figures

 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........... Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ........................... Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ... Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....... Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...

Summary

The existence of large carnivores depends on successful coexistence with humans. Large carnivore conservation is also influenced by how they are perceived by particular stakeholder groups. To collect the opinions of stakeholders we have carried out an attitude survey. In this study of public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation, we've surveyed 7610 respondents from sixteen previously identified core areas for wolf conservation across Austria, France, Italy and Slovenia. Groups that were surveyed were residents of core areas (general public), hunters, farmers (we use the word farmers for presenting livestock breeders in this report), education professionals, tourism workers, members of environmental NGOs and journalists.

In the Italian, French and Slovenian core areas the majority of respondents described themselves as being in favour of wolves and also supporting their conservation. In Austrian core areas, large majorities of respondents described themselves as being against wolf and not supporting its conservation. However, contrary to most of the other core areas, Austrian core areas and one Italian core area were sampled only via online questionnaires while other areas used a mix of different sampling methods. The sampling methods could have caused a bias in the data. Moreover, in Austrian core areas the majority of answers come from farmers and hunters.

In France, Italy and Austria respondents from farmer and hunter stakeholder groups in majority described their feelings as being against the wolf. In Slovenia, only farmer respondents were in majority against the wolf, while hunters were in majority in favour of the canid. The general public, an important indicator of a society's "climate" towards wolf conservation, is in France, Italy and Slovenia overall cautiously supportive of the wolf and its conservation.

Human tolerance of the wolf is the most important factor that has a significant impact on maintaining wolf presence in our environments. Among stakeholder groups, hunter and farmer respondents in Italy and France and farmer respondents in Slovenia seem less tolerant to wolves living in nearby forests. In Austria only environmentalist respondents in majority answered that they would tolerate wolves living in nearby forests.

Public perceptions about the species' abundance play an important role in shaping public support or opposition to different management measures. It seems that farmer and hunter respondents in all the countries disagree with seeing wolf numbers increase in their regions, while respondents from most of the other stakeholder groups in France, Italy and Slovenia seem to mostly accept increasing wolf numbers. In Austria only the environmentalist respondents seem to mostly accept increasing wolf numbers, while respondents from all other stakeholder groups do not accept the increase.

Tolerance to the presence of large carnivores depends largely on the number of conflicts they have with humans. Among the stakeholder groups, farmers and hunters were the groups that most strongly agreed with the statement that wolves cause abundant damages to livestock.

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Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 13 Large carnivores are apex predators and might have an important role in the ecosystem. Through predation they affect numbers, distribution and behaviour of large herbivores and can limit mesocarnivores through intraguild competition/predation. However, conflict with hunters can arise due to competition for game (roe or red deer, chamois, wild boar...). The majority of hunters in our survey didn't acknowledge the possible wolf's role in keeping wild ungulate populations healthy. In addition, the majority of hunters in all countries also thought that wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossible, which under certain conditions, rare but real, could actually happen.

Presence of large carnivores in the local environment can bring opportunities for the local community, mostly in the form of ecotourism. In France stakeholder groups mostly agreed that wolves attract tourists, while in Italy and Slovenia respondents were not so sure about that. In Austria the majority of stakeholder respondents disagreed with the statement that wolves attract tourists.

Education and information sharing can play an important role in the acceptance of large carnivores. All stakeholder groups in all countries agreed that there is a lack of education and sharing information about wolves. The same is also true for the core areas data, with respondents mostly agreeing that there is a lack of education and sharing information about the species.

Overall, the Austrian data seem to differ significantly from data from the other countries. Beside different attitudes in Austria, also a suspected bias in the data of the Austrian dataset of the general public, tourism workers, teachers and journalists might explain it, at least partly. It will need a deeper analysis to better understand these data.

In conclusion, the results of our study suggest that although in France, Italy and Slovenia residents of the core areas were overall supportive to wolf conservation, they need to be continuously reached through well planned information campaigns. Hunters as one of the key stakeholder groups are mostly opposed to complete wolf conservation. We should recognize their opposition to complete conservation of the wolf and acknowledge their interest to sustainably manage growing populations of wolves including removals, however with the remark that current national and EU legislation offers very limited possibilities for setting this in the near future. Farmers, the group that is the main focus of practically all wolf conservation projects in Europe, were mostly opposed to wolves across all the countries.

Introduction

Public awareness campaigns are often used as tools to improve human attitudes toward wildlife and wildlife management decisions. One of the main expected results of many large carnivore conservation projects, including LIFE WOLFALPS EU, is improved local public's, farmers' and hunters' acceptance of the large carnivore(s) in question in their regions. Especially in areas that are being recolonized by large carnivores, there is often a debate about how these large carnivores and their impacts should be managed. This debate occurs because different stakeholder groups hold different values and subsequently have different or even opposing management goals. Because of that, it is important that decision-makers and all those involved in large carnivore conservation understand those values and how values influence attitudes and consequently also support or oppose conservation goals. This study, besides its capacity to increase understanding of how different stakeholder groups in different areas of the Alps see wolves, also presents a baseline assessment which will allow for evaluation of the effectiveness of a public awareness campaign which is being implemented during the project. Baseline attitude and knowledge gap surveys will also allow for better adaptation and targeting of the public awareness campaign.

Methods

Study area

Study area for the public attitude survey includes sixteen core areas defined in the LIFE WOLFALPS EU project (Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey). Status of the wolf population in these core areas ranges from sporadically present (lone wolves / dispersing animals), recolonizing (recently established reproductive packs) to present for a couple of decades.

Core Area Status of the wolf population

Maritime Alps Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Cottian Alps

Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Ossola Valgrande

Wolf packs are permanently present and have settled there less than 10 years ago.

Italian Central Alps

Wolves have been only sporadically present since 2001 (solitary individuals).

Dolomites

Wolf packs are permanently present and have settled there less than 10 years ago.

Eastern Alps

Wolf packs are permanently present and have settled there

Liguria

Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Piedmont Apennine

Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Torino

Wolf packs are permanently present and have settled there less than 10 years ago.

Aosta

Wolf packs are permanently present and have settled there less than 10 years ago.

Dinarics

Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Mercantour

Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Northern French Alps

Wolf packs have been permanently present for more than 10 years.

Tyrol

Wolves have been sporadically present for more than 5 years (solitary individuals).

Styria

Wolves have been sporadically present for more than 5 years (solitary individuals).

Upper/Lower Austria Wolf packs are permanently present and have settled there less than 10 years ago.

Questionnaires

In surveys, answers are of interest not intrinsically but because they are in relationship to something they are supposed to measure. In that sense designing a question for a questionnaire is designing a measure, not a conversational inquiry. For the purpose of this study, a basic questionnaire in five languages (English, French, German, Italian and Slovenian) was designed (see Annex 1 -Questionnaires). Additional questions were added for some countries (i.e. Italy). Consistency within the different questionnaires was preserved as much as possible in order to allow comparisons between groups. In general, the following topics were included in the questionnaire:

• Attitudes toward wolves.

• Beliefs about wolves and a knowledge section made up of factual questions.

• Attitudes toward various management issues, such as livestock issues, hunting, trust on different sources of information and others. • Personal experience with wolves.

• Familiarity with the LIFE WOLFALPS EU project.

• Socio-demographic information about each respondent. The development of the questionnaires was based on online consultations with 68 experts and stakeholders. In designing the questionnaire we've also partially used the questionnaires previously used in Italy and Slovenia. There are two main reasons for that:

• The questions used in the previous surveys were already tested and therefore we could largely omit additional pretesting of our questionnaire. • Similar questionnaires would allow direct comparisons of the results from before the start of the LIFE WOLFALPS EU project with our data, thus we have also directed our research towards more longitudinal monitoring of the attitudes and beliefs.

Sampling and data collection

Due to the Covid pandemic different approaches to sampling were taken in different core areas. It was very difficult to perform face to face interviews, so personnel from several core areas published an online survey and consequently many questionnaires were filled in online. The target groups and their respective planned sample sizes per project area were: general public (100), hunters (50), farmers (we use the word farmers for presenting livestock breeders in this report) (50), tourism workers (50), education professionals (50), members of environmental NGOs (50) and journalists (50). These groups were identified as important in wolf conservation. Members of environmental NGOs and journalists were not planned in the project application, but were added later.

Due to Covid restrictions, the general public was sampled differently in different core areas.

In some core areas, the sample of inhabitants was not random and therefore the results for the general public in those core areas are probably biased (Dolomites, Liguria, Piedmont Apennine and Austria). In Dolomites only the people coming as visitors to the park were sampled as members of the general public. In Liguria the link for the general public was shared on social pages of regional parks. In Piedmont Apennine the link was shared in their newsletter.

In Austria the general public was not purposely targeted, but was gathered through an online questionnaire, which was posted on the social media channels of the Veterinary University Vienna, sent to the Austrian centre bear wolf lynx and to several private individuals. All these sampling methods cause non-random samples. This needs to be considered when reading this report and interpreting the results presented in this report.

Core Area General public sampling method 01 Maritime Alps General public was randomly sampled with personal interviews done in the street or by randomly choosing the houses of potential respondents and asking them to answer

Cottian Alps

General public was intercepted opportunistically on the street in each place of the Core Area, fixing the number of respondents on the basis of number of residents.

Ossola Valgrande

Telephone method, face-to-face method and online questionnaire was used. The telephone method was conducted by choosing random numbers from the telephone list of cities. For the face-to-face method they visited alternating houses, of different streets, trying to distribute the collection evenly. To some people that were visited at their homes but didn't have time to answer the questionnaire face to face, the link to the online questionnaire was given.

Italian Central Alps General public was sampled by random sampling from landline telephone numbers holding the relevant area codes = CATI.

Dolomites

General public questionnaires were collected with face-to-face interviews at the starting points of Park paths.

Eastern Alps A sample of potential general public respondents was obtained from the register of inhabitantsa random stratified sample of adult (18 years and older) inhabitants. We've considered a minimal expected response rate using mail to be 20%, thus the number of questionnaires sent was adjusted accordingly. The questionnaires were mailed together with an additional envelope with prepaid postage for returning the filled questionnaire. Ten days after the mailing of the questionnaires, a reminder / thank you card was sent in order to increase the response rate.

Liguria

General public was sampled online, the link to the questionnaire was shared on FB pages of Regional Parks.

Piedmont Apennine General public was sampled through an online questionnaire by email newsletter. Before the lockdown, homes were randomly visited, but afterwards the link to the questionnaire was sent to people by mail.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 19 Torino General public was sampled through an online questionnaire.

The questionnaire was disseminated by the municipalities of the core area and published on their websites or on the Facebook pages of the Administrations.

Aosta

General public was sampled through an online questionnaire.

The questionnaire was disseminated by the municipalities of the core area through their social channels.

Dinarics

A sample of potential general public respondents was obtained from the register of inhabitantsa random stratified sample of adult (18 years and older) inhabitants. We've considered a minimal expected response rate using mail to be 20%, thus the number of sent questionnaires was adjusted accordingly. The questionnaires were mailed together with an additional envelope with prepaid postage for returning the filled questionnaire. Ten days after the mailing of the questionnaires, a reminder / thank you card was sent in order to increase the response rate.

Mercantour

General public was interviewed opportunistically in the street.

Northern French Alps

General public was targeted via flyers in their letterboxes. Flyers with the link to the online questionnaire were randomly distributed to mailboxes within the core area.

Tyrol

The general public was sampled through an online questionnaire. They advertised the online questionnaire on the social media channels of the Veterinary University Vienna, sent the link to the Austrian centre bear wolf lynx and to several private individuals .

Styria

The general public was sampled through an online questionnaire. They advertised the online questionnaire on the social media channels of the Veterinary University Vienna, sent the link to the Austrian centre bear wolf lynx and to several private individuals .

Lower Austria

The general public was sampled through an online questionnaire. They advertised the online questionnaire on the social media channels of the Veterinary University Vienna, sent the link to the Austrian centre bear wolf lynx and to several private individuals .

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Data gathered from the general public comes from towns with less than 16.000 inhabitants, except for Dolomites and Torino core areas. In the Dolomites core area we have also included the town of Feltre, because there are small villages with farms surrounded by forest and hills where wolf predations have happened. In Torino core area there is actually a wolf pack living in the rural area of the towns, so that is why we have also included questionnaires coming from towns with more than 20.000 inhabitants. Other groups (hunters, farmers (we use the word farmers for presenting livestock breeders in this report), tourism workers, education professionals, journalists, environmentalists) were sampled in a more opportunistic manner. A combination of personal interviews, telephone interviews, postal mail and web-based surveys were used.

In the Maritime Alps, staff conducted personal interviews with farmers and sent the link to the online questionnaire in email to alpine districts, tourism associations, schools, NGO associations and editorial offices.

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Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps

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In the Cottian Alps they conducted personal interviews with farmers and sent a link to the online questionnaire to hunter associations, tourism associations, schools and environmental associations.

In Ossola Val Grande, staff conducted personal interviews, phone interviews and sent a link to the online questionnaire to reach farmers, hunters, environmentalists and tourism workers.

In the Italian Central Alps, farmer and hunter associations were initially contacted by telephone or through email and/or social media networking and interviews were made by telephone, whereas more technical professions such as education professionals and journalists were reached through CATI or through professional's lists.

In the Dolomites, the online questionnaire was shared with farmers, hunters, NGO, education professionals, tourism and journalist associations. Questionnaires were also gathered in paper form at the meetings organised for farmers.

In Liguria, staff sent the online questionnaire to hunter associations, G.A.L. institution (they have direct contacts with farmers), to regional parks of Liguria (they helped them send the online questionnaire to the tourism workers in the area) and to the Center of Environmental Education of Regional Parks (they helped them send the online questionnaire to the education professionals). In Liguria staff also conducted some phone interviews with hunters and while their staff visited farmers for predation damages, they also conducted some personal interviews with farmers.

In Torino an online meeting was organised to contact the hunters and gather the questionnaires, flyers were printed and distributed at hunter associations to promote the online questionnaire, which was also put online on the websites of hunter associations. A link to the online questionnaire was sent via email to farmers, mailing list of tourism operators, mailing list of schools and NGO associations. Since the response rate of farmers was very low, they were later also contacted via phone and phone interviews were conducted with them.

In Aosta, the online questionnaire was sent to farmer and hunter associations.

In both Slovenian core areas (Dinarics and the Eastern Alps) schools in the project area were sent an email, asking them to forward the link to the survey to their biology teachers. A reminder email was sent in three weeks. The Hunting association of Slovenia was notified about the survey and asked to remind hunting clubs to pass the surveys they received to their members. Surveys were sent together with thank you cards and return envelopes to the address of hunting clubs in the project area. Later a reminder email was sent with the request to remind the hunters about the survey. Farmers were contacted with the help of the dedicated ministry. We received the addresses of all registered livestock owners and randomly chose the specific number of people (250 from each project area). They received a survey questionnaire through the mail and a thank you card a week later. A link to the online questionnaire was sent to tourism associations, NGOs and media companies.

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Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps

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In the Northern French Alps, most hunters and farmers were contacted by telephone and telephone interviews were conducted with them. Some additional farmers and hunters were contacted through email with a link to the online questionnaire or through flyers containing a link to the online questionnaire. Other stakeholders such as media, tourism and education professionals, and NGOs, were contacted by email with a link to the online questionnaire.

In the Mercantour, hunters and farmers were called by phone and personal interviews were conducted with them. A link to the online questionnaire was sent by email to touristic operators, journalists, NGO associations and education professionals (the mailing list of PNM partners and other people outside the PNM network was used) and some personal interviews were also made with these stakeholders.

In Austria all the data was collected via an online questionnaire. The link to the questionnaire was initially shared with organisations belonging to stakeholder groups, but was later also spread on social media, etc. Farmer and breeder associations promoted this questionnaire as a way to "voice their opinion". In this way, people with strong attitudes might be overrepresented in the data and consequently cause a bias in the data of other stakeholder groups in Austria, since the same questionnaire was used to collect all the data. This needs to be considered when interpreting the results below.

Data preparation

The questionnaire data was recorded in the pre-agreed table format in each core area, and merged into a single database when the field surveys were completed. Since some questionnaires had been shared online, we also received data from outside core areas. Those records were removed before the analysis.

In some core areas there were double or multiple entries of the same record; those multiplied records were removed from the dataset. If a respondent in a record answered that he/she did not hear about the project but at the following question: "Where did you hear about the project?" gave an answer, then his/her answer to this last latter question was changed to "NA". If a respondent answered that he/she is a member of an environmental NGO, but then at the following question wrote a name of an organisation that is not an actual environmental NGO (for example hunter or farmer associations), then his/her answer was changed to not a member of an NGO.

At the question about pets, if a respondent answered with sheep, goats, cows or horses (species of livestock), then this species of animals were recorded also at the question about livestock.

We checked the data for consistency, data-entry errors and missing data. The records with unacceptable amounts of missing data (more than 30 missing data points) were removed and stored in a different database, labelled as problematic cases and were not included in further analysis.

In Slovenia and Italy, respondents were assigned to the groups in which they were actually sampled. For example, a person sampled as hunter (and having also answered that he/she Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 23 is a hunter), was assigned to the hunter stakeholder group. Similarly, the general public consists of people who were sampled as members of the general public living in one of the defined core areas.

But in France and Austria, because of the way respondents were sampled, we have assigned them into stakeholder groups based on their answers to the questionnaire itself according to the following rules: if the respondent answered that he/she has livestock (sheep, goats, cows or horses), then he/she was assigned to the farmers stakeholder group, if the respondent answered that he/she does not have livestock but answered that he/she is a hunter, then the person was assigned to the hunter stakeholder group, if the person answered that he/she does not have livestock nor that he/she is a hunter but that he/she works in tourism, then the respondent was assigned to tourism workers stakeholder group, this method of assigning stakeholders continued and the stakeholder groups that followed were education professionals, journalists, environmentalists and finally general public. So the general public in France and Austria consists of everybody who by their answers does not belong to any other of the stakeholder groups. This method differs from Slovenia and Italy, where the general public consists also of representatives of other stakeholder groups, who were sampled as general public.

Analytical methods

Here, we only used descriptive statistics to present the collected data. In a future step, we will try to implement inferential statistics to better understand the dataset, and also the reasons for different attitudes between stakeholder groups and/or countries.

Results

Data set description

Altogether, we received 7.656 questionnaires. Some of these were completed online, by telephone interviews, by personal interviews or sent by post, and the data in them were sometimes missing, so they had to be removed. We have also removed questionnaires completed by persons under the age of 13. The final dataset for analysis included responses of 7610 respondents from different stakeholder groups and different core areas.

Overall, 62% of our respondents were males. Nevertheless, there were some variations at the country level. In Austria, for example, 72% of respondents were males. In Slovenia, France and Italy 63%, 59% and 54% of the respondents were males. On average respondents to our questionnaire were close to 48 years old. The oldest respondents were from Slovenia (median = 52), followed by France and Italy (median = 50) and the youngest respondents were from Austria (median = 44).

Project visibility

Overall 39% of our respondents reported hearing about our project (during the third year of project implementation). The highest share was recorded in Slovenia, 54%. In Italy, Austria and France 45%, 29% and 23% of respondents heard of the project, respectively. We further asked those that heard about the project to tell us where they heard about the project. The most frequent responses were that they had heard about the project through the media, through personal communication and through social media.

Knowledge about wolves

Questions on wolf biology and behaviour were used to assess respondents' general familiarity with wolves as a species. The one question where we documented considerable misconception was the one related to wolf introduction by people, as in Italy and Austria people mostly did not answer correctly and in France only half of the people answered correctly. Results for the knowledge items are presented in detail in

Results by stakeholder groups and by country

Attitudes toward wolf

The first question asked respondents to describe their feelings toward the wolf, using a 5point Likert-scale (completely in favour-completely against). If we look at the results based on country and the respondents' belonging to a stakeholder group, we see that in France and Italy (Figure 4 and Figure 5) the only groups not in favour of the wolf were farmers (we use the word farmers for presenting livestock breeders in this report) and hunters, while other stakeholders seem to be in favour of the canid. In Slovenia only farmers were mostly not in favour of the wolf (50% of them), while the majority of surveyed hunters was in favour of the wolf (Figure 6). Data for Austria differ clearly from the other countries (Figure 7). In Austria, all stakeholder groups seem to be against the wolf, except for the environmentalists and education professionals respondents. We asked respondents to tell us to what extent they agree with the statement "It is important to maintain wolves in IT/SL/AUT/FR for future generations.". Each respondent was answering about his own country. From the graphs (Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10), we can see that respondents from most of the stakeholder groups overwhelmingly agreed that it is important to maintain wolves. In France, farmers and hunters are the groups in which large percentages of respondents disagreed with the statement that it is important to maintain wolves in their country. In Italy a large percentage of farmer respondents disagreed with the statement, while the share of hunter respondents who agreed and disagreed are very similar to each other. In Slovenia, on the other hand, a vast majority of hunter respondents stated that it is important to maintain wolves (78%), and even the majority of surveyed farmers also agreed that it is important to maintain wolves. Data for Austria shows very different results (Figure 11), where only environmentalist respondents agreed with the statement that it is important to maintain wolves.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 29

Fear of wolf

Wolves normally avoid people and are not considered dangerous to them, which respondents from most of the stakeholder groups seem to be aware of, especially in France (Figure 12) and in Slovenia (Figure 14). From the Italian graph (Figure 13) we can see that 40% of farmer and 49% of hunter respondents declared that they would be afraid to hike in Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 31 the woods where wolves are present. We can notice that also 48% of the farmer respondents in Slovenia declared that they would be afraid to hike in the woods where wolves are present. Data for Austria shows very different results (Figure 15), where respondents from almost all the stakeholder groups, except for the environmentalists, journalists and education professionals, are in majority afraid to hike in the woods where wolves are present.

Acceptance of the wolf in the local environment

Human tolerance of the wolf is the main factor that can have a significant impact on maintaining wolf presence in our forests. Strong negative attitudes can lead to poaching, which can threaten the survival of small populations. We can see that the majority of French, Italian and Slovenian stakeholder groups agreed that they would tolerate wolves living in nearby forests of their municipality (Figure 16, Figure 17, Figure 18). Hunter and farmer respondents in Italy and France, however, seem less tolerant to wolves living in nearby forests. Among stakeholder groups respondents in Slovenia, farmers are the least tolerant group, while among the surveyed hunters, a larger share of respondents said that they would tolerate wolves. Data for Austria again shows very different results (Figure 19), where respondents from none of the stakeholder groups (except for environmentalists) would tolerate wolves living nearby.

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increasing wolf numbers in their region. In Italy other stakeholders surveyed seem to mostly agree with increasing wolf numbers (Figure 21). In France, environmentalists, education professionals, tourism workers and general public were the ones that also mostly answered that they agree with increasing wolf abundance, but we can also notice that large shares of stakeholders chose the "Neutral/Don't know" answer (Figure 20). In Slovenia, in addition to farmers and hunters respondents, the general public also mostly disagreed with increasing wolf numbers, while majorities of other stakeholder groups agreed with an increase in wolf abundance (Figure 22). Data for Austria shows very different results (Figure 23), where respondents from none of the stakeholder groups (except for environmentalists) would agree with increasing wolf numbers. Good knowledge of the public's opinion is crucial for successful management of wolf populations. Wolf is a strictly protected species in most European countries. At the same time, in some countries culling is carried out. In Slovenia, the ministry responsible, based on population data, sightings and the number of wolves culled in the previous period, as well as based on damage to livestock and other data, can approve the exceptional cull of a predetermined number of animals. In France, an annual ceiling of 19% of the estimated average size of the wolf population at the end of winter can be culled each year under strict derogatory conditions to protect livestock from depredation. With the question "Wolf hunts are needed in IT/SL/AUT/FR',' we wanted to get the public's opinion on culling as a method to manage wolf populations. In France and Italy the majority of respondents from most of the stakeholder groups did not agree with the notion that wolf hunts are needed (Figure 24 and Figure 25), nevertheless hunter and farmer respondents in both countries have a different opinion and in majority agreed that wolf hunts are needed. In Slovenia respondents belonging to education professionals, environmentalists and tourism workers mostly disagreed with wolf hunts, while hunters, farmers, journalists and the general public mostly agreed that wolf hunts are needed (Figure 26). Data for Austria shows very different results (Figure 27), where respondents from all the stakeholder groups (except for environmentalists) agreed that wolf hunts are needed.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 39

Damages

Tolerance to the presence of large carnivores depends largely on the number of conflicts they have with humans. In addition to the financial aspect, the emotions of those harmed can also play an important role. In a document prepared within the LIFE WolfAlps project We have asked the respondents to decide to what extent they agree/disagree with the statement "Wolves cause abundant damages to livestock". In France the respondents from all the stakeholder groups in large shares agreed with the statement (Figure 28). As we can see from the numbers listed above, France is indeed a country with a much higher number of attacks than any of the 3 countries participating in the project. In Italy hunters, farmers, the general public and tourism workers mostly agreed with the statement, while environmentalists disagreed (Figure 29). We can also notice that large shares of stakeholders in Italy chose the "Neutral/Don't know" answer. In Slovenia most of the respondents from farmers, hunters, the general public and tourism worker groups agreed that wolves cause abundant damages to livestock, while environmentalists, journalists and education professionals mostly disagreed (Figure 30). The Austrian graph shows different results (Figure 31), where respondents from all of the stakeholder groups agree that wolves cause abundant damages to livestock, even though in reality they had by far the lowest number of attacks (in 2019) of the 3 countries participating in this study. We have asked the respondents to decide to what extent they agree/disagree with the statement "Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf depredation should be compensated". And we can very clearly see that vast majorities of all stakeholder groups in all countries strongly support the compensation for livestock loss due to wolf depredation.

Hunting and beliefs regarding wolf impacts on game species

Large carnivores are apex predators and might have an important role in the ecosystem. Through predation they affect numbers, distribution and behaviour of large herbivores and can limit mesocarnivores through intraguild competition/predation. However, conflict with hunters can arise due to competition for game (deer, chamois, wild boar...). We have assessed the extent of this issue by asking the respondents to answer two questionsone about the wolf's role in keeping wild ungulate populations healthy and the other one regarding the impact of wolf predation on hunting.

In France and Italy most of the farmer and hunter respondents disagreed with the statement "Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animals and thus keep wild ungulate populations healthy.", while other stakeholder groups agreed with the statement, except the undecided journalists (Figure 36 and Figure 37). In Slovenia majorities of all stakeholder groups, except hunters, agreed with the statament. Hunters in Slovenia were divided among agree and disagree options (Figure 38). Similar to the previous Austrian graphs, this one (Figure 39) also shows very different results compared to other countries. Namely, respondents from all of the stakeholder groups in Austria in majorities (except for the environmentalists and journalists) disagree that wolves mainly prey on old and sick animals. In Slovenia hunter and farmer respondents mostly agreed that wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossible, while other stakeholder groups disagreed (Figure 42). In France and Italy only hunter respondents agreed with that Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 48 statement (Figure 40 and Figure 41). In Austria the respondents from all of the stakeholder groups, except for environmentalists, education professionals and journalists, in majorities agreed with that statement (Figure 43). We asked respondents to answer to what extent they agree/disagree with the statement "Wolves attract tourists." Results show that among the general public, farmers and hunters in Italy and Slovenia, the wolf is less recognised as an opportunity to develop ecotourism (Figure 45 and Figure 46). Most of the large carnivore tourism offer in Slovenia is currently developed based on brown bear watching activities. In France all stakeholder groups mostly agree that wolf presence offers benefits to tourism (Figure 44). This might be explained by the fact that in the Mercantour is a national park and a tourism destination and so respondents from there are probably already conscious that fauna/flora are attractive to tourism.

In Austria the respondents from all of the stakeholder groups disagree with the statement that wolves attract tourists (Figure 47). Results by core area

Attitudes toward the wolf

The first question asked respondents to describe their feelings toward the wolf (Figure 52) using a 5-point scale (completely in favour-completely against). In all Italian, French and Slovenian core areas the majority of respondents to the questionnaire described themselves as being in favour of the wolf. The share of those describing themselves as being neither in favour nor against seems to be higher in the Central Alps and in the Mercantour core areas.

Vast majorities of respondents in all three Austrian core areas answered that they are against wolf. Respondents in all 16 core areas assessed their agreement/disagreement to "It is important to maintain wolves in IT/SL/AUT/FR for future generations." (Figure 53). Each respondent was answering about his own country. All core areas in France, Italy and Slovenia mostly agreed that it is important to maintain wolves. Majorities of respondents in all three Austrian core areas answered that they disagree with the importance of maintaining wolves. Overall results show that respondents from Italy, France and Slovenia generally have positive attitudes towards wolves and wish to preserve them in their countries.

Acceptance of the wolf in the local environment

We asked respondents to what extent they agreed with the statement "I would tolerate wolves living in nearby forests of our municipality". Respondents in most core areas mostly agreed that they would tolerate wolves living in nearby forests (Figure 55). We notice that in the Eastern Alps the percentage of those who disagreed with the statement and the percentage of those who agreed with the statement are very close to each other. In Austrian core areas the respondents mostly answered that they wouldn't tolerate wolves living nearby.

Wolf population management -size of the population and hunts

Public perceptions about the species' abundance play an important role in shaping public support or opposition to different management measures. We have used a series of statements to assess these perceptions.

Firstly we wanted to know whether the respondents would agree with increasing wolf numbers in their region. As we can see from Figure 56, their opinions were more divided than in the previous graphs. In the Dolomites and Aosta core areas, the shares of those agreeing and those disagreeing with increasing wolf numbers are quite similar. Among the Italian core areas, Ossola Valgrande is the only area in which the majority of respondents disagreed with increasing wolf numbers. This more negative opinion about increasing wolf numbers in Ossola could be a consequence of an ongoing active and organised protest because of the presence of the wolves, which is strongly supported by exponents of the local political world.

In addition, the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola area looks with great interest at the example of management in nearby Switzerland, which operates wolf culling (with prior authorisation) with the aim of mitigating the impact on pastoral activities. Finally, wolves have colonised this area less than 10 years ago, so the presence of packs is new to the people living there.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 60

In both Slovenian core areas (Dinarics and Eastern Alps), the majority of respondents said that they would not agree with increasing wolf numbers. In the Northern French Alps, the larger share of the respondents agreed with increasing wolf numbers, while in the Mercantour the larger share of the respondents disagreed with increasing wolf numbers.

Respondents from Tyrol, Styria and Lower/Upper Austria largely disagreed with increasing wolf numbers in their region. Secondly, we asked respondents to decide how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the statement that they already have enough wolves in their region. As we can see from Figure 57, many respondents chose the "Neutral/Don't know" answer here, indicating that they maybe don't know what the optimal numbers of wolves in their regions could be. The wolf is a strictly protected species in most European countries. At the same time, in some countries wolf culling is carried out. With the question "Wolf hunts are needed in ITA/SL/AUT/FR", we wanted to get the public's opinion on culling as a method to manage wolf populations. Prevalent opposition to hunting wolves was documented in most core areas (Figure 57). The Eastern Alps, Dinarics and Piedmont are the three core areas where the majority of the respondents agreed that wolf hunts are needed in their respective countries.

Damages and damage prevention

Mitigation of conflicts associated with large carnivores due to damage to livestock is crucial for their conservation. Areas where wolves are returning after decades of absence and where people have abandoned husbandry practices, which prevented damage, can present the biggest conservation issue due to large economic losses and intense social conflicts. In Slovenia and France, livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf depredation receive compensation, which is paid by the government. In Italy and Austria, a unified national compensation system is absent, so compensation differs between regions/states as explained in a document prepared within the LIFE WolfAlps project (Prevention of damages caused by large carnivores in the Alps).

When asked to what extent they agreed with the statement "Livestock owners that lose 63 livestock due to wolf depredation should be compensated.", respondents in all core areas largely supported compensation for livestock lost due to wolves (Figure 59).

Hunting and beliefs regarding wolf impacts on game species

The fact that wolves prey primarily on wild ungulates (such as deer and chamois) is often mentioned as a cause for the wolf being disliked by hunters. We have assessed the extent of this issue by asking respondents to answer a question regarding the impact of wolf predation on hunting (Figure 60). Respondents in the Dinarics and in all Italian and French core areas mostly disagreed with the statement "Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossible". However, in the Eastern Alps the percentages of those who agreed and those who disagreed

Discussion and conclusion

Before reading the discussion we advise you to read the Methods, since there are some differences on how the data has been collected.

Our results show influence of the county of residence and stakeholder group in attitudes towards wolves.

In general, farmer (that means livestock breeder) respondents were the most negative stakeholder group in their attitudes towards wolf and wolf conservation. They most likely have negative attitudes because they can often be strongly affected by the presence of wolves through depredation of livestock, which brings financial and emotional consequences for them. This can also be seen from the farmer's answers to the statement "Wolves cause abundant damages to livestock.", where large majorities of farmers in all 4 countries agreed with that statement.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps

78

Hunter respondents were also quite negative in their attitudes, except for Slovenia, where the majority of them was positive. Majorities of hunter respondents answered that they agree with the statement "Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossible", so we could argue that their negative attitudes towards the wolf come from their fear of the impact the wolves might have on ungulate populations. In Slovenia, hunter respondents in majority also seem to be afraid of wolf impact on ungulate populations, however they also seem to acknowledge the ecosystem role that wolves might have by preying on old and sick animals and thus keeping wild ungulate populations healthy. We could thus argue that their awareness (knowledge) of the possible importance of wolves in the ecosystem leads them to be more positive in their attitudes towards wolves.

As expected, environmentalists had the most positive attitudes towards the wolf and were also the most supportive to wolf conservation.

In Austria however, we can see that the majority of stakeholders was not supportive of the wolf and wolf conservation, but that can be due to the sampling method used in Austria (you can read more about data sampling in the Methods section of this report).

Among the core areas, respondents from 3 core areas in Austria seem very negative, with Tyrol being the most negative of them all. This could be partially explained by the sampling method used in Austria. Farmer and breeder associations also promoted this questionnaire as a way to "voice their opinion". In this way, people with strong attitudes might be overrepresented in the data. Moreover, in Austria the general public was not purposely targeted, but gathered via the same online questionnaire, which was posted on the social media channels of the Veterinary University Vienna, sent to the Austrian centre bear wolf lynx and to several private individuals.

In France, respondents in the Northern French Alps have more positive attitudes toward wolf and wolf conservation than respondents in the Mercantour area.

In Slovenia there is a similar situation to other countries, yet with respondents having more positive attitudes towards wolf and wolf conservation in the Dinarics core area than in the Eastern Alps core area. However, in this case wolf packs have been present in the Dinarics area for many decades, while in the Eastern Alps they have started forming reproductive packs just in the last few years. Moreover, strong opposition towards wolf presence exists among sheep and goat breeders in the Eastern Alps, which could also affect other stakeholders in that area to some degree.

Overall, the Austrian data seem to differ significantly from data from the other countries. Beside different attitudes in Austria, also a suspected bias in the data of the Austrian dataset of the general public, tourism workers, teachers and journalists might explain it, at least partly. It will need a deeper analysis to better understand these data.

The results of our study suggest that although overall supportive of wolf conservation, residents of core areas in the Alps need to be continuously reached through well planned information campaigns. Hunters as one of the key stakeholder groups are mostly opposed to

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 79 complete wolf conservation. We should recognize their opposition to complete conservation of the wolf and acknowledge their interest to sustainably manage growing populations of wolves including removals, however with the remark that current national and EU legislation offers very limited possibilities for setting this in the near future. Farmers, the group that is the main focus of practically all wolf conservation projects in Europe, were mostly opposed to wolf conservation across all the countries. Further efforts are therefore needed to better understand wolf depredation of livestock, to better protect herds and to better address the concerns of livestock breeders in the Alps.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 80

Annex 1: Questionnaires in English, French, German, Italian and Slovenian languages

Annex 1 :

 1 Questionnaires in English, French, German, Italian and Slovenian languages Annex 2: Graphs on Trust in sources of information about wolves Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 3 :

 3 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 4 :

 4 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 7 :

 7 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 8 :

 8 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 9 :

 9 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure

  Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 20 :

 20 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 29 :

 29 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 30 :

 30 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 31 :

 31 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey .................................................................Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate. ................................................................................................................Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy ............................................... Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................ Figure 5: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................ Figure 6: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .........................Figure 7: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...............Figure 9: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ....................Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...........Figure 11: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............. Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France ........................... Figure 13: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................... Figure 14: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ........................ Figure 15: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...........................Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...Figure 17: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .......Figure 18: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia Figure 19: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ...Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 21: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................................................................................................................................. Figure 22: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 23: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 25: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ........................... Figure 26: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .................... Figure 27: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France ..................................................................................................................................Figure 29: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ......................................................................................................................................Figure 30: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ...............................................................................................................................Figure 31: Wolves cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ..................................................................................................................................Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France ...........................................................................................

Figure 33 :

 33 Figure 33: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................................................................................ Figure 34: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ......................................................................................... Figure 35: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ........................................................................................... Figure 36: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 37: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ...................................................................................................................................... Figure 38: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 39: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 40: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................................................................... Figure 41: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................................................................... Figure 42: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................ Figure 43: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................................................................... Figure 44: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 45: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................ Figure 46: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ..................... Figure 47: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 48: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................................................................................... Figure 49: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .................................................................................................... Figure 50: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .............................................................................................Figure 51: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................................................................................... Figure 52: Feelings toward wolfopinions of core areas .....................................................Figure 53: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of core areas ..........................................Figure 54: Unnecessary to have wolves because abundant populations already exist in other European countriesopinion of core areas .........................................................................Figure 55: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of core areas ................................Figure 56: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of core areas .....................Figure 57: Already have enough wolves in my regionopinion of core areas ......................Figure 58: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of core areas .................................................... Figure 59: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of core areas ........................................................................................................................

Figure 53 :

 53 Figure 33: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................................................................................ Figure 34: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ......................................................................................... Figure 35: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ........................................................................................... Figure 36: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 37: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ...................................................................................................................................... Figure 38: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 39: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 40: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................................................................... Figure 41: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................................................................... Figure 42: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................ Figure 43: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................................................................... Figure 44: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 45: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................ Figure 46: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ..................... Figure 47: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 48: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................................................................................... Figure 49: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .................................................................................................... Figure 50: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .............................................................................................Figure 51: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................................................................................... Figure 52: Feelings toward wolfopinions of core areas .....................................................Figure 53: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of core areas ..........................................Figure 54: Unnecessary to have wolves because abundant populations already exist in other European countriesopinion of core areas .........................................................................Figure 55: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of core areas ................................Figure 56: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of core areas .....................Figure 57: Already have enough wolves in my regionopinion of core areas ......................Figure 58: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of core areas .................................................... Figure 59: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of core areas ........................................................................................................................

Figure 54 :Figure 60 :

 5460 Figure 33: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................................................................................ Figure 34: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ......................................................................................... Figure 35: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ........................................................................................... Figure 36: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in France .................................................................................................................................. Figure 37: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ...................................................................................................................................... Figure 38: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................................................................... Figure 39: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria .................................................................................................................................. Figure 40: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................................................................... Figure 41: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ................................................................................... Figure 42: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ............................................................................ Figure 43: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................................................................... Figure 44: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in France ....................... Figure 45: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy ............................ Figure 46: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia ..................... Figure 47: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ....................... Figure 48: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France ............................................................................................... Figure 49: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Italy .................................................................................................... Figure 50: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia .............................................................................................Figure 51: There is a lack of education and information sharing about wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Austria ............................................................................................... Figure 52: Feelings toward wolfopinions of core areas .....................................................Figure 53: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of core areas ..........................................Figure 54: Unnecessary to have wolves because abundant populations already exist in other European countriesopinion of core areas .........................................................................Figure 55: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of core areas ................................Figure 56: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of core areas .....................Figure 57: Already have enough wolves in my regionopinion of core areas ......................Figure 58: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of core areas .................................................... Figure 59: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of core areas ........................................................................................................................

  Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 15 less than 10 years ago.

______________________________________________________________________________________Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Study area of the public attitude survey

  Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 17

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Reminder / Thank you! card was sent to potential respondents in order to increase the response rate.

Figure 3 :

 3 Figure 3: Gender distribution in France/Austria/Slovenia/Italy

Figure 4 :Figure 5 :Figure 6 :Figure 7 :

 4567 Figure 4: Feelings toward wolfopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 8 :Figure 9 :

 89 Figure 8: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 10 :Figure 11 :

 1011 Figure 10: Important to maintain wolvesopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia

Figure 12 :Figure 13 :Figure 14 :Figure 15 :

 12131415 Figure 12: Not be afraid to hikeopinion of stakeholder groups in France

______________________________________________________________________________________Figure 16 :Figure 17 :Figure 18 :Figure 19 :

 16171819 Figure 16: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 20 :Figure 21 :Figure 22 :Figure 23 :

 20212223 Figure 20: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 24 :Figure 25 :Figure 26 :Figure 27 :

 24252627 Figure 24: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of stakeholder groups in France

  Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 41 (Prevention of damages caused by large carnivores in the Alps) we can find the numbers of attacks in each of the surveyed countries for 2019: in Austria there were 22 attacks on sheep and cattle and 84 animals affected, in France there were 3.469 attacks on sheep and cattle and 11.569 animals affected, in Italy there were 333 attacks on sheep, goats and cattle and 1.552 animals affected, in Slovenia there were 328 attacks on sheep and cattle and 1.304 animals affected.

Figure 28 :Figure 29 :Figure 30 :Figure 31 :

 28293031 Figure 28: Wolf cause abundant damages to livestockopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 32 :Figure 33 :Figure 34 :Figure 35 :

 32333435 Figure 32: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 38 :Figure 39 :

 3839 Figure 38: Wolves mainly prey on old and sick animalsopinion of stakeholder groups in Slovenia

Figure 40 :

 40 Figure 40: Wolves greatly reduce ungulate populations and make hunting impossibleopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 44 :Figure 45 :Figure 46 :Figure 48 :Figure 49 :

 4445464849 Figure 44: Wolves attract touristsopinion of stakeholder groups in France

Figure 52 :

 52 Figure 52: Feelings toward wolfopinions of core areas

______________________________________________________________________________________

  Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 58

Figure 54 :

 54 Figure 54: Unnecessary to have wolves because abundant populations already exist in other European countriesopinion of core areas

______________________________________________________________________________________Figure 55 :

 55 Figure 55: Would tolerate wolves living nearbyopinion of core areas

Figure 56 :

 56 Figure 56: Would agree with increasing wolf numbersopinion of core areas

Figure 57 :

 57 Figure 57: Already have enough wolves in my regionopinion of core areas

  Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 62 Respondents from Tyrol, Styria and Lower/Upper Austria largely agreed with the need for wolf hunts in their country.

Figure 58 :

 58 Figure 58: Wolf hunts are neededopinion of core areas

Figure 59 :

 59 Figure 59: Livestock owners that lose livestock due to wolf should be compensatedopinion of core areas

______________________________________________________________________________________Figure 73 :

 73 Figure 73: How much do you trust Politiciansopinion of core areas

Table 2

 2

	. Overall, the

Table 1 : Knowledge questions (the correct answers are highlighted with green colour)

 1

		1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	Average
		Question	Question	Question	Question	Question	Question
	Italy	72%	80%	88%	38%	55%	71%	68%
	Slovenia	56%	86%	92%	63%	59%	66%	70%
	Austria	40%	65%	90%	34%	50%	91%	62%
	France	75%	84%	92%	50%	66%	72%	73%

Table 2 : Percentage of correct answers within each country

 2

	Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1

______________________________________________________________________________________

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 26

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation inAustrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps

Progetto LIFE18 NAT/IT/000972 -LIFE WolfAlps EU -Action D1 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 46

Education and sharing information about wolves

Education and sharing information can play an important role in the acceptance of large carnivores. There is a known link between knowledge and fear, so with target education campaigns and information dissemination, the level of knowledge increases and the proportion of fear among the local inhabitants decreases. From the results we can see that respondents from all stakeholder groups in all countries in majority agree that there is a lack of education and sharing of information about wolves (Figure 48, Figure 49, Figure 50 and Figure 51).

Trust in sources of information about wolves

We asked respondents how much they trust specific sources of information about wolves. We can say that in general in France and Slovenia the most trusted sources of information are biologists, followed by foresters and veterinarians. In Italy most trusted are foresters, veterinarians and biologists. In Austria the most trusted are veterinarians and foresters. By far the least trusted sources of information in all the countries are politicians. All the graphs for stakeholder's trust in sources of information are enclosed in the Annex 2 at the end of the report.

Public attitudes toward wolves and wolf conservation in Austrian, French, Italian and Slovenian Alps 57

Value of the wolf for ecotourism

Wolves usually prefer to avoid human presence and opportunities to see them are rare. This makes direct observations more difficult and therefore maybe less interesting for wildlife watching tourism. When we look at the results of French, Italian and Slovenian core areas (Figure 61), we see that opinions about the statement "Wolves attract tourists" are quite divided. In French, Italian and Slovenian core areas, majorities disagreed with the statement "Wolf presence negatively impacts biodiversity of alpine meadows" (Figure 61). Respondents from Tyrol, Styria and Lower/Upper Austria mostly agreed with that statement.

Education and sharing information about wolves

Education and sharing information can play an important role in the acceptance of large carnivores. Therefore, we also included a question about this topic. From the results we see that respondents from all core areas overwhelmingly agreed that there is a lack of education and sharing of information about wolves (Figure 63).

Trust in sources of information about wolves

We asked respondents how much they trust specific sources of information about wolves. As seen in the graphs below, the most trusted sources of information are foresters, veterinarians and biologists. The least trusted sources of information are by far politicians, followed by the media.