Human-Bear or Human-Human Conflict? COP17 and Armenia’s Race to Act

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The term “conflict” usually implies an intentional clash between two conscious parties—a confrontation involving strategies, winners and losers. In human-wildlife encounters, however, this scientific term is largely a matter of convention. A bear is not waging war against humans; it is simply trying to survive in a changing ecosystem. The path of least resistance often leads not to the deep forest but to an open village dumpster, an unprotected beehive, or a farmer’s apple orchard.

In international practice, it has long been established that so-called “human-wildlife conflict” is, at its core, a deep socioeconomic and “human-human” crisis.

While theoretical coexistence strategies are being developed, statistics from Armenian villages reveal a stark geographical concentration of the problem. According to official data, between 2022 and 2025, not a single case of damage caused by bears was registered in Armenia’s Armavir, Gegharkunik and Kotayk regions. In Shirak and Aragatsotn, such incidents can be counted on one hand. Yet, during these same four years in the southern Vayots Dzor region more than 440 cases of bear-related damage to communities were recorded.

This small yet biodiverse region, and particularly the Yeghegis Gorge, has transformed into an open-air laboratory, putting Armenia’s ability to coexist with wildlife to a real-time test. So what actually drives the bears of Vayots Dzor to leave their natural habitat and cross into human settlements? Local stereotypes and scientific facts diverge sharply on this question. 

From Global Crisis to Local Anomaly

Human-wildlife conflict is not a uniquely Armenian or local phenomenon; it is one of the most pressing global conservation challenges of the 21st century. The term entered international discourse as human infrastructure and agriculture began ruthlessly encroaching upon natural wildlife habitats. Today, according to research by the World Bank and Alexandra Zimmermann, chair of the IUCN Human-Wildlife Conflict Specialist Group, about three-quarters of the world’s countries consider it a major concern in their biodiversity issues.

In 2022, with the adoption of Target 4 of the UN Global Biodiversity Framework at COP15 in Montreal, human-wildlife coexistence was formally established as an international priority for the first time in history.

This conflict takes brutal forms around the world. In India, farmers ruined by financial losses regularly poison or electrocute elephants that trample their crops and leopards that enter their villages. In northern Japan, bears are gradually taking over the streets and abandoned orchards of aging, depopulated villages, leading to unprecedented and bloody records of attacks on humans. In Kenya, herders use pesticides to eradicate protected lions and safeguard their livestock.

In Armenia, however, this global issue has taken on a highly peculiar geographic distribution.

Looking at official data from regional authorities, one might get the impression that bears in one half of the country maintain tacit neutrality, while in the other half they have launched active operations. 

Between 2022 and 2025, not a single case of a bear entering a settlement or causing damage was recorded in Armavir, Gegharkunik, and Kotayk regions. Close behind are Ararat, Aragatsotn, and Lori, where incidents, though present, can be counted on one hand. Even in Shirak region, only isolated incidents were registered over the past four years: a bear appeared in the city of Gyumri in 2022 without causing damage, and in 2024 bears damaged several beehives and a sheep in the villages of Amasia and Ashotsk. Similarly, in heavily forested Syunik, the conflict is surprisingly low, with official records showing only 27 incidents across the entire region between 2017 and 2021.

The picture changes dramatically in Vayots Dzor. The region lies within one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, areas of exceptional species richness and endemism that simultaneously face severe threats from anthropogenic pressure and habitat loss.

With its rocky terrain, the Yeghegis Gorge, and natural corridors running between mountain ranges, Vayots Dzor is precisely the kind of ecological space where wildlife and human settlements have historically been squeezed side by side. In recent years, however, this coexistence has become increasingly fraught, making Vayots Dzor the epicenter of Armenia’s human-bear conflict.

A comparison of bulletins from regional authorities reveals not only an unprecedented volume of cases but also an alarming trend. In 2022, the region recorded 69 cases of damage and attacks in communities; in 2023, that number more than doubled, reaching 141. A slight decrease followed in 2024 (115 cases), but in 2025 the curve crept upward again, with 123 incidents.

That is 448 recorded cases in four years. Moreover, data from the regional authorities, the Ministry of Environment, and expert studies indicate that the conflict here is largely economic in nature. Bears target beehives, fruit orchards, and livestock. Yet this economic damage is merely a superficial symptom. Behind it lie a broken ecological chain, a state data vacuum, and a behavioral anomaly inadvertently shaped by humans.

Uncounted Bears, Rivers Choked in Pipes and Blind Resource Exploitation

The first prerequisite for containing any conflict is knowing the scope of the problem. In Armenia, however, managing human-bear conflict is like looking for a black cat in a dark room: we are trying to manage a population whose size we cannot even guess. There is no updated, scientifically grounded state census of brown bears in the country.

Alexandra Zimmermann emphasizes the importance of spatial planning and accurate population data. Knowing where bears are and how many there are allows authorities and communities to better anticipate their movements, identify areas of potential conflict and take basic safety precautions. “You don’t want to be surprised by these things if you’re in your village,” she says, adding that for Armenia, more systematic research on bear populations and their movements would be an important foundation for managing the conflict. 

It remains unknown whether the bear population has grown or the same number of bears has simply begun entering settlements more often. Either way, field studies by the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC) and zoologists have identified what is driving the predator out of the forest. The first link in that chain is water.

For decades, the semi-wild orchards along the banks of the Yeghegis River, with their mulberry, walnut and wild apple trees, served as the main foraging corridor for bears. Today, however, Yeghegis is one of the most overburdened and aggressively exploited rivers in Armenia. More than 17 small hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) on the river and its tributaries divert its water into pipes, disrupting the natural hydrological regime.

The drying of the riverbed and the loss of environmental flow have caused a double loss. Fish stocks and aquatic biodiversity, once crucial sources of protein and hydration for bears, have been drastically reduced. And deprived of groundwater, the riparian fruit trees have withered.

As Andranik Gyonjyan, head of the research group at the Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), points out that the change in the river’s flow has led to many orchards drying up, with disruptions in fish stocks and the aquatic environment. “The river no longer possesses its former volume and biological resources, which constituted a food source and survival habitat for the bears,” he said.

With water depleted and fish stocks and fruit-bearing zones largely gone, the animals have lost their natural food and are being forced down into cultivated orchards and homesteads.

Wild Plant Harvesting: The Invisible Market and the Data Vacuum

According to various hypotheses, the second factor is the harvesting of wild plants and berries. A widespread belief in the villages holds that overharvesting of forest yields is starving the bears. Professor Georgi Fayvush of the NAS Institute of Botany, however, leans toward a different view: harvest volumes have historically not changed significantly, and plant scarcity is largely a consequence of climate change and drought.

According to Fayvush, the key wild species that make up the bear’s food base, including Caucasian pear (Pyrus caucasica), eastern crabapple (Malus orientalis), hawthorn (Crataegus), rosehip (Rosa), and walnut (Juglans regia), are highly sensitive to weather anomalies. A sudden spring frost or summer drought can wipe out a season’s fruit in a matter of weeks. Wild fruit trees in arid mountain areas are also aging, while increasingly dry conditions are slowing their natural regeneration. Together, these pressures are steadily reducing the forest’s natural food supply.

Fayvush also points to a critical documentation gap: Armenia has never conducted a biomass inventory of its wild fruit trees and berries. In other words, science has no measurable data on how many tons of wild pears or rosehips grew in the forest 20 to 30 years ago versus today, so claims of “overharvesting” are based more on assumption than on fact.

The result is a complete vacuum of state statistics.

Preserved wild edible plants, herbal teas, and berries are widely sold in Armenia, yet there is no comprehensive assessment or monitoring of their natural stocks. In response to an official inquiry, the Ministry of Environment provided tables of wild plant harvesting for 2020–2025. They list only herbarium and seed samples collected for scientific purposes by the NAS and NGOs, along with a few isolated commercial harvests.

The Ministry also reported that under the current Law on Flora, the use of Armenia’s flora is not regulated.

In other words, the state has no baseline data on its wild plant stocks. It does not know how many tons of rosehip, sea buckthorn, or walnuts actually exist in the country’s forests, or what portion is being harvested without oversight. It is precisely this information vacuum that makes it impossible to determine whether bears are going hungry because of climate or because of unregulated business.

The Ministry notes that a new package of legislative amendments has been circulated, which regulate the types and procedures of flora use. As a long-term practical solution for restoring the food base, FPWC is already running a forest restoration program, planting wild edible fruit trees to create natural food sources for wildlife.

The next link in the broken chain is livestock farming. Statistics provided by the Vayots Dzor regional authorities for 2018–2026 show a steady and alarming decline in animals grazing in the fields.

The regional authorities’ data reveal a striking picture. Sheep and goat numbers fluctuate or have even grown in some communities, such as Areni and Malishka, but cattle farming is declining steadily across almost all vulnerable settlements. In Yeghegis, the herd fell from around 5,000 head in 2018 to 3,345 in 2026. In Vayk, it dropped from 6,379 in 2022 to 4,611, and in Gladzor it shrank from 448 to 174.

What does this have to do with bears? Gyonjyan explains it in straightforward biological terms. As livestock farming has declined, so have the carcasses of animals slaughtered or lost by shepherds, which for decades were a primary source of protein for bears. They have disappeared from the landscape. Deprived of this resource, bears have begun to meet their protein needs by going after farmers’ sheep and poultry directly.

When a hungry bear approaches a village, it finds open dumpsites and food waste. The Ministry of Environment confirms that this alters the animal’s behavior, teaching it to associate settlements with easy food. But recent social surveys by FPWC in affected communities uncovered an even more absurd and dangerous reality: some people deliberately feed bears, whether to avoid damage, attract tourists, or simply for entertainment.

As a result, bears can gradually lose their natural fear of humans. Zimmermann says they are highly intelligent and constantly weigh the risks of accessing a food source. “If there is an easier food that is more sugary, they’ll take that. Why not?” she says. A deterrent will only work if the risk outweighs the reward. If the food is tempting enough, the bear may simply find a way around it.

Long-term solutions begin, she says, first and foremost, with understanding the landscape through the eyes of a bear.

Add this to the fact that mother bears sometimes bring their cubs down to the edges of villages on purpose, to protect them from aggressive males in the forest (as Gyonjyan has observed), and we end up with a population born and raised near human habitats. For these bears, humans are not dangerous but suppliers of free food and garbage bins. As long as we try to solve the problem without data, romantic notions of coexistence will pave a direct path toward an inevitable tragedy.

Hard Measures, “Cosmetic” Solutions, or Collaborative Risk Management?

When human-bear conflict reaches a critical point, local communities and decision makers typically demand quick, visible and tough measures. The Ministry of Environment outlines a range of technical and preventive measures. These include GPS collar monitoring, electric fencing, the elimination of open dumpsites, proper waste management, and rapid response teams drawn from the Ministry of Environment, regional authorities, local police, the Rescue Service, the FPWC, and zoologists.

On the ground, FPWC has already launched several measures, including providing bear-proof bins to vulnerable communities. These are reinforced containers with locks that keep animals away from food waste.

Experts, however, disagree about how effective these measures are in the long term.

Gyonjyan argues that electric fencing and other “soft” methods are insufficient. In his view, active deterrents, including rubber bullets and specially trained dogs, are necessary to drive bears away from villages:

“We need to make the animal understand that entering human territory is painful and dangerous,” he says. “If a bear knows that entering a village means being shot with rubber bullets or attacked by trained dogs, it will lose that confidence and will no longer approach the settlement.”

International experience, however, suggests that active deterrence with highly intelligent animals often backfires. Alexandra Zimmermann says the method has produced highly mixed results worldwide:

International experience, however, suggests that active deterrence can backfire with highly intelligent animals. Zimmermann says bears are difficult to condition through pain because they can adapt their behavior and will “find a way around it,” warning that such measures may simply move the problem elsewhere.

Zimmermann argues that human-bear conflict cannot be addressed through scientific measures, fencing or deterrence alone. While Armenian authorities and NGOs emphasize public awareness and education, she cautions that education without practical support for affected communities can deepen resentment rather than build cooperation. There is no systematic state mechanism for compensating farmers for damage caused by bears, thereby, “educating” a community left without support can backfire.

In Zimmermann’s view, technical and deterrent measures work only when they are chosen together with the affected community. If the state or NGOs install electric fencing or deploy deterrents in a village on their own and the bear bypasses them, the community places the entire blame for the failure on the external party, which further deepens the “human-human” and “human-state” conflict. When the community itself participates in choosing and planning the solutions, it becomes a co-owner of the outcome. This is why human-wildlife conflict management around the world has long since evolved from nature conservation into an art of diplomacy, social justice, and governance.

On the Brink of Crisis: One Step From Tragedy

Armenia is standing on an invisible but extremely dangerous red line. Despite hundreds of attacks and major economic damage in Vayots Dzor, no human fatalities or severe injuries have been registered in the country so far. But this is not the result of systematic management. It’s simply good luck, and it is only a matter of time before a local anomaly turns into tragedy.

As Zimmermann warns, a single fatal or severe incident is enough to turn public sentiment 180 degrees. Today it is still possible to discuss the conservation of a Red Book-listed animal on scientific platforms. After the first bloody incident, however, social networks and affected communities will demand a harsh response. “There will be a spike in media coverage and demands to solve this. I think it is important for Armenia to tackle this now. Do not let it get to a point when it becomes a crisis,” she explains.

Instead of waiting for that threshold, international experience suggests abandoning “blind management” in favor of holistic prevention. “I would invest hugely in that prevention. Most countries don’t do that. They wait for the crisis,” Zimmermann says, pointing to state governance as the main obstacle. “It takes a lot of coordination and a bit of wisdom to do that. And that’s where politics often get complicated. You need to get the humans to coordinate to do this.”

Field specialists emphasize the importance of predictive modeling of bear populations and food supplies while the animals are still in the mountains. In the villages themselves, Zimmermann says, the priority is building a practical safety culture, and she points to Japan and India for effective examples. On the Valparai plateau in southern India, an early-warning SMS network was introduced to prevent fatal attacks by wild elephants. People receive instant phone alerts about animal movement, and fatalities have dropped drastically. In North America and Japan, meanwhile, the state teaches people to carry and properly use bear spray. These powerful capsaicin-based aerosols let a person stop an attack from several meters away during an unexpected encounter, keeping both the human and the animal safe.

Zimmermann also points to Bhutan as a successful example of coordination across sectors at the state level. This mountainous country did not wait for a crisis to erupt. Instead, the state developed and implemented a comprehensive National Human-Wildlife Conflict Management Strategy. The Bhutanese model brought the ministries of environment and agriculture, local self-governing bodies, and farmers into a single coordinated effort, preserving ecological corridors and introducing working systems of preventive support.

“The policy one is explicitly in Target 4 of the Global Biodiversity Framework,” Zimmermann notes. “At COP17, countries will have to look at how much progress they’ve made.” She adds that the IUCN Specialist Group is currently developing a unified monitoring methodology. “Armenia can do a quick assessment of the current human-wildlife conflict situation, for all species, not just bears. Then in five years, it could do the same again and look at the trend. Has it gotten worse or better?”

Most importantly, no technical solution will work if the state and NGOs make decisions in their offices while ignoring the farmers who bear the damage. Human-wildlife conflict cannot be resolved by shooting bears, nor by leaving villagers alone with their losses. It requires restoring both ecological balance and social justice.

For Armenia, this is an exceptional opportunity to show the region and the international community how to manage a conflict wisely before it turns into tragedy. Otherwise, bears will keep losing their fear of humans, and both sides will pay the price.

Environment