Patterns of Human–Brown Bear Conflict in the Urban Area of Brașov, Romania

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

You've done some good work and described an interesting problem (and made me really want to visit Brasov!). However there's a lot of work needed to make the presentation and interpretation of your findings stronger. Write less about North American contexts or the global scene- focus on the particulars of your case, in the European context.

The presentation of your methods is very good, and the flowchart is especially helpful. However, your maps are difficult to interpret- I can't relate the inset to the larger map in figure 1, nor identify where exactly the city is (green usually denotes vegetation but I wasn't sure if that was the case here), and consequently the following map & discussion of deforestation lacks the benefit of context. I simply wasn't able to understand how much forest had been lost in the city or the surrounding landscape, nor could I really assess whether your argument about deforestation as a conflict driver was sufficient. Figure 8 deserves a more detailed caption, especially because it suggests that attractants & human foods are a very obvious issue. On that topic I was struck by the periodic spikes in conflicts, and surprised that you didn't discuss that phenomenon in greater detail. The conclusion was weak and felt both formulaic and disconnected from your findings: you have some interesting results, so speak to them!

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 Manuscript Title:

The manuscript title looks self-explaining now.

 Introduction

The manuscript title is about the brown bear conflict, but the authors are consistently talking in this section about the bears in general. One can does not perceive they are telling about brown bears. Therefore, It will be good if authors can give background about the brown bears in particular, rather than talking about the bears.

I think the introduction section is vague and needs a lot of improvement and focus must be on brown bear species, rather than being on bears in general

Methods section

Study area

The authors have given enough description about the study area, but they have not mentioned that only brown bear species exists there. The authors are suggested to write clearly that they are talking about the brown bear species when they say bear species

Discussion

Discussion section needs improvement focusing on the current study findings

Conclusion

This section needs to be rewritten based on the findings of the current study

 

References: many of the references are about the black bear species.  

Comments to authors:

The manuscript needs further minor revision as per attached comments.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx