Removing Barbed Wire to Save Italy's Rarest Bear

Salviamo l'Orso ("Let's Save the Bear") works across Abruzzo, Molise and Lazio in central Italy to protect the critically endangered Marsican brown bear, a subspecies found nowhere else and numbering only 50-60 individuals. Since 2018, its volunteers have removed an average of 10 km of abandoned barbed-wire fencing a year — with peaks of up to 20 km — from mountain corridors that once blocked bear movement between protected areas, while since 2017 the group has been planting native fruit trees and orchards to give bears safer food sources away from roads and villages. The organization focuses on five key ecological corridors linking the Central Apennines' protected areas, working to grow the population toward the roughly 300 bears needed for long-term viability.