Chapter 4 uses chronicles, hagiographies, ekphraseis and polemical treatises to discuss clerical hunting in Romanía. Prohibitions against clerical hunting had existed for Western men since Late Antiquity, but there is not enough evidence to suggest that Romanía followed the same pattern. In the Eastern Roman context, narratives of clerical hunting did not put the emphasis on differences between secular and religious men, and non-participation did not entail the loss of masculine capital. Rather, the focus was on human/animal interactions and the need to avoid overindulgence, and the emphasis was the same whether the person involved was an emperor or a cleric. The animals themselves also had an important role to play: they were not simply seen as prey to be dominated by the manly man but could act as co-creators of the skills necessary for the hunt, leaving their traces on their co-hunters’ subjectivity. At the same time, the malleability of Eastern Roman ideas about which animal lives were worth preserving allowed authors to strategically unify all men against the animal Other or to distinguish between different types of men, creating in the process hierarchies of masculinities.

This chapter argues that two works of Victorian children’s literature – Alfred Elwes’s The Adventures of a Bear (1853) and The Adventures of a Dog (1854) – capture the complex politics of selfhood in relation to animality and law. They also demonstrate the trope of transformation from animal to human: the dog becomes a trusted policeman (or equivalent) and the bear ends up a blind beggar. In both cases, the choice of animals as protagonists allows for a frank discussion of violence, gender, and class conflict.

This chapter distinguishes two ways in which the Middle Ages conceived the relationship between human and nonhuman creatures. The first, according to which humans are a unique kind of animal (in the Latin word’s sense of “living being”), is available primarily to the learned, whereas the second, widely attested in lay usage and practice, concerns the difference (or lack of it) between humans and “beasts.” The chapter explores the complication of both relationships in the French and English romances of William of Palermo (late twelfth-/early thirteenth-century and mid-fourteenth-century, respectively), in which one aristocratic protagonist is turned into a werewolf and others disguise themselves in the skins of bear or deer. Human exceptionalism appears to condition the story’s coding of social dysfunction as animalization, but the romances equally show medieval aristocratic and chivalric identity embracing its proximity to “beasts,” for example, in the notion of sovereignty, in the symbolic languages of heraldry and dreams, and in moments of explicit self-identification. The chapter concludes by arguing that the way these romances build their fiction with reference to animals is materialized in the manuscript books that transmit them, made up as they are of parchment pages, that is, of processed animal skins.

Utilitarian conservation attempts to minimize or eliminate populations of species that are viewed as pests because they cause economic damage or threaten the health and safety of people or domesticated organisms. People disagree about what constitutes a pest. Pigeons, English sparrows, wolves, tigers, and many other organisms inspire strong positive and negative feelings. Pest control is most acceptable if it is non-lethal and has little effect on non-target species. Integrated pest management strives to use biological pest control, habitat manipulation, and education to maximize the efficiency of pest control. Historically, predators were targeted by government control programs including bounties, but Aldo Leopold changed his attitude about wolves in the influential essay Thinking Like a Mountain. Human behavior toward dangerous animals such as bears may exacerbate pest problems.

In this chapter the major conservation issues bears face is reviewed and management actions that can address these conservation issues are highlighted. The future of bears across the world is bright for some species but dark for others. In some areas such as North America and in parts of Europe and Asia, bear populations have increased and stabilized because of increased management effort and increasing support for bears and their needs by the humans who share habitat with them. However, for most bear species, the future is uncertain. Andean bears continue to be threatened by habitat loss and human encroachment. In much of Asia outside Japan, Asiatic black bear, sloth bear, and sun bear populations are increasingly threatened by unmanaged excessive mortality combined with habitat loss to timber harvest, plantation agriculture, and human encroachment. The long-term future for polar bears is threatened by the unmanageable threat of climate change. Giant pandas are fragmented into small populations despite intense conservation efforts. Improving public and political support for bears is the most important need if we are to realize successful bear conservation and management.

For thousands of years, bears have been kept in captivity to generate income for people. To this day, throughout Asia, three main types of commercial use persist: bear baiting, bear dancing, and bear bile farming. Through these uses tens of thousands of bears are being subjected to conditions that are highly detrimental to their welfare through physiological and psychological impairment during capture, transport, training, and captive conditions. All bear species endemic to Asia, as well as most brown bear populations in Asia, are recognized as threatened with extinction and listed under CITES Appendix I, making any international commercial trade in live animals or their parts illegal. Unfortunately, some countries maintain national legislation that allows for commercial trade or use of bears within that country. Furthermore, illegal international trade is continuing to pose challenges to law enforcement and the conservation and protection of bears worldwide. In this chapter we draw attention to the historic backgrounds, current situation, and holistic approaches that are needed to address these complex issues that are impeding bear welfare and conservation in Asia.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are the primary cause of climate change and an estimated increase of 3.7 to 4.8 °C is predicted by the year 2100 if emissions continue at current levels. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) provide an interesting comparison study of the impact of climate change on bear species. While polar bears and giant pandas are arguably the most distant of the bear species with regard to life histories and behavior, both are likely to be significantly impacted by the broad-scale changes to their environment that are predicted to result from climate change. Herein, we review the conservation status of both species and their habitats, and present current and predicted evidence of the impacts of a changing climate on polar bear and giant panda survival.

Three potentially competing bear species inhabit tropical Asia: the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), sun bear (Helarctos malayanus), and Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus). Sun bears (30–80 kg), the smallest species of bear in the world, are about half the size of black bears (65–150 kg) and sloth bears (55–145 kg). What factors generate the separation of sloth bears geographically from black and sun bears? What factors facilitate the extensive sympatry of black bears and sun bears? How are these patterns structured by evolutionary history and competition between bear species, and what mechanisms facilitate their coexistence or maintain their separation? Has current forest loss and degradation benefited one species over another? If so, has interspecific competition played a part? These questions are the focus of this chapter.

Large carnivores, such as brown bears (Ursus arctos), wolves (Canis lupus), and tigers (Panthera tigris), can play a key ecological role from their apex position in trophic systems. Within the overall context of bottom-up and top-down regulation of ecosystems, predation by large carnivores often induces demographic and behavioral changes in prey species. These vertical interactions between different trophic levels are important regulatory mechanisms in nature. On the other hand, competitive interactions between species, or horizontal interactions within the same trophic level, are also common. Interspecific interactions between large carnivores are widespread in many ecosystems and can play an important role in community structure and stability. Predation is the mechanism driving apex predators’ function in nature, but it is also a source of conflict with different stakeholders, e.g. hunters and livestock owners, when predation affects domestic or semidomestic species (depredation). This situation is challenging when trying to secure long-term carnivore conservation and coexistence with people in the human-dominated landscapes that currently characterize most of our planet.

The interruption of animal movement by fragmentation is a major force with far-reaching ecological and conservation consequences. Understanding fragmentation processes underpins our ability to manage landscapes for connectivity, facilitating many ecological processes including gene flow interpopulation dynamics and demographic rescue. Here the current status of fragmentation, connectivity, methods, consequences, and management of the world’s eight bear species is reviewed. The metapopulation paradigm is also considered, i.e. are bears being forced into some form of functioning metapopulation or are they simply being fragmented into a series of isolated populations that, without conservation action, will likely be slowly extirpated, population by population?

Molecular genetics are key to understanding current and historical relationships between isolated populations, including species’ colonizations during glacial–interglacial cycles, to determine viability of local populations, needs for habitat corridors, and other aspects of population management, especially where bears are harvested for sport, etc. As natural habitats shrink, some bear species will inevitably require high levels of management, perhaps combining captive and wild populations following the IUCN’s One Plan Approach. In this chapter we review the systematics of the Ursidae and its relationships with other Carnivora, the molecular phylogenetic of extant ursid species, the phylogeography of and morphological variation within each species, and the use of molecular genetics to monitor bear populations for management and conservation.

The mating system and mating strategies of a species refer to the behavioral strategies used to obtain reproductive partners and ensure reproductive success. Common determining factors of mating systems and strategies are: the manner of mate acquisition, the number of mates obtained by an individual, as well as the absence or presence and duration of parental care. In mammals, the energetic investments in gametes and rearing offspring are typically larger for females than for males. Mate selection is thus a much more important decision for females than for the rather indiscriminate males. This dichotomy results in sexual selection, which in turn is determined by male–male competition for access to females, as well as female mate choice. Because receptive females are generally considered the limiting resource in reproduction, males face intrasexual competition for mates. In a multitude of mammalian species, including bears, this has resulted in pronounced sexual size dimorphism and polygamous mating systems. Despite common characteristics (e.g. sexual size dimorphism, polygamy), variation in mating systems and strategies occur among bear populations and species.