Would we welcome bears in Britain again?

In April this year, a jogger in the Italian Alps was mauled to death by a brown bear. This was reported as the first bear killing in Italy in modern times. But it probably won’t be the last. Bears have been reappearing in northern Italy as part of a rewilding project in the last two decades, returning to regions they had been driven from hundreds of years ago. More encounters between bears and humans are inevitable.

In Eight Bears, Gloria Dickie explores how we can coexist with the remaining bear species on Earth, protecting those in danger as well as negotiating how to share space with those that are not. She takes us around the world to see how different bears are coping with environmental pressures, and how humans are coping with bears.

Bears have not lived wild in Britain for hundreds of years. But they’re still part of our cultural landscape, appearing on coats of arms and pub signs. They loomed large in the world view of our ancestors, and the role of bears in folklore sees them as our opposite, or perhaps our brother, a bipedal creature that seems so much like us. We have spiritually domesticated them, knowing them in fairy tales and spending our childhoods cuddling their small stuffed avatars. Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington are part of every nursery.

Our affection for fictional (and stuffed) bears has meant sympathy for the real thing, in terms of conservation. It wasn’t an accident that the World Wildlife Fund chose a panda for its logo. Many of us think fondly of bears – as long as we don’t cross paths with one on a hiking trail. Pandas themselves have become one of the great conservation success stories.