Abstract
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.