Following human social and cultural developments during history, bears have been considered harmful and dangerous animals, enemies for humans and even a threat to our supremacy over nature, before actually transforming themselves into the icons of wilderness, in a tortuous path at the end of which the species has become the emblem of the renewed relationship with the environment.
The relationship between men and bears is therefore changeable, and has transformed itself, through technology and the invention of firearms, into a forced coexistence first and later into a real massacre.
Only deep social and economical changes, started during the second post-war period, and the cultural

metamorphosis that has followed, have allowed us to understand the importance of the bear.In such a context in 1996, in order to avoid the extinction of the last authochtonous population of bears on the Italian Alps, which were relegated in the Eastern part of Brenta Dolomites (Western Trentino) and reduced to no more than 3 examples, through the EU Life financial supports, an ambitiuos intervention of safeguarding for the brown bear has eventually started. The project, called Life Ursus, has been sponsored by Adamello Brenta Natural Park and and carried out in collaboration with the Autonomous Province of Trento and the National Institute for the Wild Fauna: it is based on the release of 10 individuals from Slovenia, trying to rebuild, in the medium-long run, a vital population of bears on the central part of the Alps.

Within the project, many other useful events have been realized, for example campaigns for the residents in order to strengthen public awareness, promote a deep knowledge of the issue for those who work in the camps' activities and an adjustment of the law-frame for the prevention and compensation of the damages. As in the predictions, the reintroduced bears have perfectly adapted themselves to the new vital area: according to the data gathered through the monitoring activities led by Adamello Brenta Natural Park and by the Autonomous Province of Trento (the legal institution in charge of the species on the provincial territory) has been possible to establish an evident growth in number and a territorial expansion of the nucleus of brown bears returned to live the central portion of the Alps. The Brenta bear population is actually esteemed in more than 20 examples, thanks to the 8 reproductive events verified occured in the last five years (for a total of 20 baby-bears born altogether in Trentino). If from a side the success of the operation of reintroduction is also confirmed by the enlargement of attendance areas - on the other the species hasn't been confined within the sole Western Trentino, but its areal is expanding more and more, both towards North and South; the recent explorations of some bears across the Italian border underline the difficulties that the brown bears meet in the process of recolonization of all those suitable areas because the "social and political habitat" is not yet sufficiently proportionate to their actual needs.

The future of bears on the Alpine chain depends on the possibility of connecting the different family units now present in Trentino, Friuli, Austria and Slovenia. It appears as the priority today the search of new forms of cooperation among authorities and territorialy competent administrations , that will be able to adjust and share forms of sustainable coexistence, promoting the acceptance of bears and a sense of responsibility especially among the resident people. It is thus quite desiderable that a true "culture of the bear" could develop, even outside Trentino, where the criteria of the conservation chosen by the Adamello Brenta Natural Park and by the Autonomous Province of Trento have led local people to ponder forms of life that will allow them to coexist with the bear. We are becoming aware, in other words, of the ecological, cultural and legal factors that make the brown bear a very peculiar species. To safeguard the bear, distinguished by ecological requests and wide vital spaces means, in the first place, safeguarding the environment with its biodiversities.
The importance of bears lays, maybe even more than anywhere else, in what the brown bear represents for history and human traditions. Its presence in human culture has indeed very deep and ancient roots, that had followed social and cultural developments through to our times. The bear is near men already from the beginning of civilization, as it is witnessed in the rock paintings of the Chauvet Cave in Pont d'Arche, France; to the bear are linked numberless rites, myths and legends that proceed from the Hellenic, Celtic and Germanic cultures, passing through Beowulf, and the Chançon de Roland.
The brown bear holds also a special place in the ancient fairy-tales, in a continuous itinerary that makes it transform, in more recent times, into a cartoon and a teddy-bear, and symbolic protagonist the publicity.
The estinction of the bear, therefore would lead to an undoubted cultural impoverishment to the disappearance of a crucial protagonist in the history of mankind, like it would be the destruction of a work of art or of a monument.
Next to the ethical motivations, another important reason does exist and it is meant to protect, safeguard, "guarantee the state of conservation" of such a species: the legal context in which we live.
The brown bear is - as a matter of fact - an extremely peculiar and relevant species in Europe, as it has been confirmed by the numerous laws, EU and national policies on the safeguarding of biodiversities.
After all, laws are nothing but the expression of human culture.