Carolyn Mahan and representatives from Italy’s Forestry Carabinieri and Re-Wildling Apennines observe and photograph wildlife at a sheep farm adjacent to Abruzzo National Park, Italy. Farm operators are implementing predator-safe practices such as night-penning and use of guard dogs to protect their flock at this location.
Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at Penn State Altoona Carolyn Mahan is, to put it mildly, an enthusiastic researcher. In just the last 10 years alone she has studied the presence of pollinators in rights-of way, searched for chinchillas thought to be extirpated from Peru, and planted trees at Flight 93 National Memorial, where she is also involved in invasive plant research. She has also introduced her students to a life of research by taking them to the Chesapeake Bay to study the marsh and to Hawai’i to study evolution and Polynesian culture. Her latest journey, though, she says, is “probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.”
Mahan says, “In the United States, large carnivores have been extirpated from 90% of their range in the lower 48 states since the early 1900s. In Italy, not only do large carnivores persist, but central Italy contains a suite of megafauna that persisted through the Roman empire, two world wars, and the modernization of the landscape.” So, she asks, “Are there things we can learn from Italy about co-existence between humans and large predators? Italians didn’t necessarily plan for this coexistence. Why did it happen? Is it something the people are doing? Is it policy? Is it the animals themselves?”
To possibly answer those questions, she says, “The science director at the US Embassy in Rome wanted to bring people together to talk culture and policy.” To make that happen, “I worked collaboratively with the US Embassy, and two other organizations, Italy’s Forestry Carabinieri, and a nongovernmental group, Re-Wildling Apennines, over the past 18 months to bring an international group of people together to talk about these topics.”
The plans came together in an event titled the Forum for the Coexistence Between Humans and Large Carnivores, held November 9-10, 2023, at the Centro Studi Americani (Center for American Studies) in Rome. The morning of the first day included opening remarks by representatives from each entity, including Jack Martell, US ambassador to the Republic of Italy and San Martino, who said, “I really want to thank Penn State for helping make this forum happen to bring international partners together. Penn State is one of the United States’ finest research universities.”
Carolyn Mahan photographs the innovative trash receptacle in use at Abruzzo National Park. These receptacles are placed in the park and towns adjacent to the park to prevent bears from becoming accustomed to foraging in human landscapes. Representatives from the Edmund Mach Applied Ecology Foundation and the US Embassy are also pictured.
Mahan helped moderate the conference and keynotes were given by Professor Paolo Ciucci of the “Charles Darwin” Department of Biology and Biotechnology, La Sapienza University of Rome, and Stewart Breck, a carnivore ecologist with the US Department of Agriculture and National Wildlife Research Center, Colorado. Funding for the conference was provided by the US Embassy and the Italy Forestry Carabinieri with in-kind support from various groups including Penn State, Re-Wilding Apennines, and Abruzzo National Park.
The afternoon’s agenda featured invitation-only “honest, policy roundtable discussions,” she says, one on brown bears and one on gray wolves, the two large carnivores under study. Attendees included academics from both countries, representatives from numerous NGOs and national parks, and private citizens such as Cameron Krebs, an Oregon sheep and cattle rancher. The following day was a field trip. “We went out to farms and places where farmers are living with bears and wolves to see how they are implementing practices to coexist with these carnivores,” Mahan says.
The entire project, she notes, was “all prompted by a research question that was unfunded by National Science Foundation . NSF recommended that we collect pilot data—so that sent me back to Italy and that’s when I met the people at the embassy. This additional data collection effort was funded by the Penn State Huck Institutes of Life Sciences with matching funds from the research office at Penn State Altoona.”
While “rewarding,” Mahan admits, it was also “one of the most challenging things I’ve done. When you do a forum like this, and look at an issue closely, it is never simple. It’s not only diverse worldviews and goals—but different countries and groups. You have to work with all parties and you have to do it in good faith.” And, of course, she still has the all-important question: “How are we going to make the things we discussed at this forum happen?” For that she has an answer: “The pilot data is being collected and analyzed and in spring 2024, we’re going to resubmit the research grant.”
—Therese Boyd, ’79