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All Research Articles
The province's recently released grizzly bear numbers don't tell the full story of what's needed to help Alberta's grizzly populations, Alberta conservationists say.
Jim Pissot, the executive director of Wild Canada Conservation Alliance, and Nigel Douglas, Alberta Wilderness Association conservation specialist, both see the report as a call to the government to limit motorized access to grizzly habitat.
New Jersey’s black bear population has soared to nearly 3,500, a level that can no longer be controlled solely by non-lethal methods, a wildlife biologist said today as the state Fish and Game Council adopted a management policy recommending a six-day hunt in December.
The biologist, Patrick Carr, said the main reason for the growing population is the abundance of food state residents willingly and unwillingly provide. The result, he said, is that the bruins are living longer and giving birth to more cubs than bears in other parts of the country.
LAKE COUNTY, Fla. -- You say bears keep taking your garbage and redistributing it around your yard? Well, do something about it.
At this year's Florida Black Bear Festival, held on March 27, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) have a challenge for everyone.
Figure out a way to keep them out of your garbage. If you can do that, you can win one of three $100 gift card to Lowe's.
An updated grizzly bear status report released today by the Alberta government confirms shockingly low numbers of mature breeding grizzly bears in Alberta and highlights the urgency of reducing the number of grizzly deaths in the province. Conservationists now assert that there is no longer any reason to delay necessary recovery actions, including listing the grizzly as Threatened under the Alberta Wildlife Act, limiting the densities of roads and reducing the amount of motorized access in prime grizzly habitat, and implementing effective public education and conflict prevention programs.
A status report on Alberta’s grizzly bear population and habitat, prepared by an independent scientist, is now available online.
The status report establishes a new baseline of information using the advanced technique of DNA surveys and other data.
The report estimates 691 grizzly bears ranging in density from five to 18 bears per 1000 square kilometres. Some local populations with significant habitat alteration may be declining, other populations appear stable
How much stress does crossing a busy logging road cause a grizzly bear? What happens when a bear has to share its backyard with oil rigs, mountain bikers and Sunday golfers? Environmental scientists can answer these questions as never before. Stepping away from his role as Trent University president, Steven Franklin dove into his passion for nature Monday, highlighting the technological advancements that are allowing researchers to predict ecological dangers before they happen.
Anchorage: You like having moose and bears as neighbors -- you just don't want any more of them. Park users in particular say wildlife makes the city "more interesting and special" and see the animals as a point of pride. Bears are less welcome than moose, but 60 percent of Anchorage opposes the idea of mapping out special bear-free zones were bears would be killed on arrival. All that according to a new survey of Anchorage residents released this month by the state Department of Fish and Game. The aim is to gauge how the city feels about the potentially dangerous wildlife at its doorstep.
TERRACE, B.C. - People around the world can now go online to peek inside the den of a rare kermode bear in B.C. while the animal hibernates.
Imagine running around trapping and collaring black bears and crawling into bear dens! Last year RESA students succeeded in trapping two bears, one at UWSP Treehaven and the other just outside of the city limits near one of the student's homes.
The North American Bear Center's Web site had 467,000 page views during 2009 - not bad for a 2-year-old operation based in end-of-the-road Ely. But thanks to Lily the hibernating bear, her newborn cub and the world's first live video of a wild black bear birth, the Bear Center has seen more interest in 2010. A lot more. "We had more than 3 million visitors over three weeks in January alone," said Lynn Rogers, longtime Ely bear researcher and the driving force behind the Bear Center.
TAHOE NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — Jason Holley carefully lowered brother and sister bears into their new homefor winter Wednesday afternoon, hoping when they wake up in the spring, they won't see people again.
The 1-year-old black bear cubs were orphaned last June, when their mother was shot in the Carnelian Bay area. After a few months at the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care center, Holley, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, along with others from Fish and Game and the staff of the Sagehen Creek Field Station, sent them off into hibernation north of Truckee.
A new Parks Canada report has shown that over the past two decades nearly 23 black bears have been killed annually in the Rocky Mountain national parks.
The report indicates all of the mountain national parks, including Glacier, Revelstoke and Waterton Lakes, saw a total of 477 black bear mortalities between 1990-2009.
Watch out, Smokey. Keep your head down, Yogi.
Saying that California's black bear population has quadrupled in the past 25 years, state Fish and Game Department officials are drafting new rules that could increase the number of black bears killed by hunters each year in the state by 50 percent or more.
The proposal also would allow hunters for the first time to use global positioning system devices on the collars of hounds that they use to track bears, along with automatic triggers that alert hunters when their dogs have treed a bear.
As the number of black bears in the US grows, largely due to protection measures taken over the past century, the chances of these animals interacting with humans increase as well. Wildlife authorities managing national parks, where this threat is most severe, turned to science to help them devise the best possible methods of keeping bears away from thrash cans, and therefore reducing the risks of violent encounters with humans. Details of the work appear in the January issue of the respected Journal of Wildlife Management, Wired reports.
Nunavut's environment minister has rejected a wildlife regulator's recommendation for how many polar bears should be hunted in the Baffin Bay region.
The current quota allows the killing of 105 bears a year in the region, which stretches from Baffin Island in Nunavut to northern Greenland.
The territorial government asked the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in 2008 to consider a smaller bear harvest or a hunting moratorium in the region.
Madison — The sight of a black bear in Wisconsin elicits a range of emotions among us human inhabitants.
"Awe" may be the most common reaction. An animal that can outrun, outclimb and outwrestle an NFL linebacker seems to curry immediate respect.
Sometimes the "fear" instinct kicks in, too, especially if we're on foot and get a guttural sense of our comparable weakness.
If a sow or bruin is raiding your bird feeder, "anger" may even surface.
But rarely if ever does a bear draw "indifference."
That's even true today, when the state's bear population is likely higher than at any point in our lifetimes.
A new competition is encouraging the designers of wildlife overpasses to think outside the box and create wildlife structures for the next generation.
The first ARC: North American Wildlife Crossing Structure Design Competition, which was announced late last year, is being used to encourage new ideas, materials, methods and thinking.
Dr. Tony Clevenger, a senior wildlife research scientist at the Western Transportation Institute at the Montana State University in Bozeman, said the question is whether overpasses can be built cheaper using recycled and new materials coming onto the market, including plastics and concrete.
CHASE: Teaching them to avoid people works best if conditioning is done right after first contact with human food.
Black bear encounters happen every summer in Alaska, and a new study suggests rubber bullets are the best way to send the bruins packing.
An article in this month's issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management based on a four-year study in California's Sequoia National Park says shooting black bears with rubber slugs from a 12-gauge shotgun is most effective -- better than pepper spray, chasing them off or hitting them with rocks. Researchers detailed 1,050 instances of so-called aversive conditioning on more than 150 bears, some of which had become accustomed to human food
The Bear Aware Program Delivery Specialist, Betty Offin, and Joanne Siderius, the program’s provincial supervisor, gave a presentation to city council on Dec. 18, detailing the program’s successes in 2009.
The provincial program aims to reduce human-bear conflicts.
In 2009, of the 10,303 black bear reports in B.C., 88 were made in the Castlegar area.
Offin said the numbers have been in sharp decline.
Kevin Burke was guiding a group of tourists along the shores of western Hudson Bay in late November when he spotted six bears in the distance.
Initially, he didn't know what to make of the small female among them that was bluff-charging a bigger bear in a stand of willows. But once the tundra vehicle got up close, he quickly discovered why the animals were so excited.
"First, I saw the pool of blood on the icy pond. Then I saw a male bear with something in its mouth. And then, when it turned towards us, I realized, 'Uh-oh, that's the head of a cub.' The mother was desperately trying to save it, while the rest of the bears were trying to get in on the action and feed on the remains. It was all over by that point. There was almost nothing left of it when we got there."
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