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All Research Articles
CTV Ottawa News' Leanne interviews, Martyn Obbart, Steve Herrero and Steven Amstrup at the International Bear Association Conference. Watch three segments here.
Whitehorse Wildland Park - In the spring of 1999, biologist Gord Stenhouse captured a healthy, six-year-old grizzly bear on the east slopes of the Rocky Mountains. G16, as she came to be known, was one of 18 animals he got in the first year of a study designed to determine the number of bears in a 5,352-square-kilometre area along the east boundary of Jasper National Park.
For nearly three years, Stenhouse and his colleagues were able to track G16 with the help of a satellite collar that transmitted her movements several times a day. But when the collar fell off in 2002 because of a failing battery that triggered the release, they never saw or heard from her again.
High-tech equipment, a qualified mentor, and a Grade 10 student's perseverance are combining in a ground-breaking science project at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School (TRSS).
Keenan Render's two-year study on black bear speciation across the Rockies isn't just a novel idea - it's an example of the school district's mantra of "21st-century learning" in action in Tumbler Ridge.
"This is an honours to masters degree level of experiment," explained TRSS biology instructor Mark Deeley, who is guiding Render through the process.
It's a graphic reminder about the importance of securing garbage cans or coolers full of food -- to keep bears from breaking in. The black bears at the BC Wildlife park in Kamloops got a special snack today - one that bear aware hopes will send a powerful message. Wildlife park officials demonstrated just how easy it is for a persistent bruin to crack open most garbage containers. The park is hoping to be designated an official "test site" for bear-resistant cans
With strong advances in DNA technology, researchers in Banff National Park are trying to get a better handle on the number of bears living in the Bow Valley and surrounding wilderness.
Researchers have been able to use hair to identify and monitor individual grizzlies and black bears by using a method that didn't require the stressful capture, drugging or handling of bears.
The non-invasive genetic sampling research project has detected a total of 80 individual grizzly bears and 85 individual black bears in the study area over a three-year period.
The death this week of a mother grizzly on the train tracks near Lake Louise — leaving two cubs orphaned — has renewed calls for Canadian Pacific and Parks Canada to do something about the problem of bear deaths.
A number of initiatives have been in place for years, including vegetation management along the right-of-way and the vacuuming up of grain fallen from passing railcars. As well, crews report bear sightings to the rail traffic controller, and other crews are thus alerted to the bear’s presence. It’s heartening, however, to learn that new initiatives will be unveiled in a joint announcement in the next few months by CP and Parks Canada, and that future efforts arising from CP’s five-year, $1-million research program will begin to focus on the science around bear behaviour.
I first observed Jeanie out of the den on May 21 with two black cubs on Whistler Mountain.
The twenty-year-old mom then had at least one aggressive encounter with a coyote and two aggressive encounters with large male bears.
Coyotes have been known to sneak up to small spring cubs to kill them for food although I've never seen them be successful. Male bears pose the more serious threat to spring cubs killing them to force the mothers back into the breeding cycle. The last time I saw Jeanie with two cubs was on May 24. On May 26, Sylvia Dolson of the Get Bear Smart Society saw her with only one cub during the Toonie Bike Race in the lower Bike Park. Both mom and cub were treed and appeared agitated.
PINEDALE, Wyo. — A Wyoming game official says the population of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park region is off by about 40 percent.
Wyoming Game and Fish Deputy Director John Emmerich said there's at least 1,000 grizzlies in the region, 400 more than the official grizzly bear estimate of 600.
If you go out in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise. A teddy bear picnic it is not, as local [black]bear populations rise from a winter of hibernation to a poor berry yield. Though fewer berries doesn't mean a higher chance of attack, it does indicate bears will be roaming closer to roads and garbage sources in search of food.
New data released in a report of the Journal of Wildlife Management this month confirms previous information that 88 per cent of fatal [black] bear attacks in Canada and the U.S. are the result of predatory behaviour of a male black bear.
Every spring for the past 11 years, Samson has returned to feed in the same small area in the Whistler Valley.
As the largest of the male black bears identified by bear researcher Michael Allen, Samson doesn't have an ear tag (used by Conservation Officers to track conflict history) and has no known history of serious conflict, making him a perfect example of a bear co-existing healthily with humans.
If you believe Stephen Colbert - and really, who doesn't? - bears are deadly.
"Bears are soulless, godless, rampaging killing machines," the comedian has written. "They are Satan's minions and the TRUE symbol of evil."
He might be surprised, then, by a new study that found that black bears - the most common bears in North America - have killed only 63 people in the United States and Canada over the last 109 years.
A wildlife biologist scheduled to speak in Durango next week says her research shows that black bears become human-food chow hounds for life if they forage in urban areas as cubs. Rachel Mazur studied black bear sows and cubs for 11 years in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in California where she worked for the National Park Service. She now works for the Forest Service in Nevada.
In the national parks, Mazur's research subjects included bears that fed only in the wild and bears that lived off easily accessible campground garbage cans and loose trash left by day-use visitors.
Ely, MN (Northland's NewsCenter) - Researchers say finding out what caused the cub's death could be delayed due to recent developments.
Researcher Sue Mansfield was there when the 3-month old cub died.
"We went in search of his mother and then after we found her we went back and checked on him and he was in the final stages of dying," said Mansfield.
I could just the make out the coarse tips of brown hair. My head was twisted tightly down to the left as the weight of my body crammed my head and shoulders deeper into the snow. If a skier or snowboarder happened by it would definitely look like I was head first in a tree well...which I kind of was. Any slight movement and I kept losing the only view deep inside the bear's hollowed lair.
I found this newly constructed bear den last October and did not linger in case I left human scent. I made note of the large crack above the entrance where I could possibly peek in later during winter
HOUGHTON, Mich. - A Michigan Technological University researcher is using a $1 million grant from National Institutes of Health to see if a bear hormone holds promise for treating osteoporosis in humans.
Associate professor Seth Donahue has long been studying bears to help learn what protects their bones against calcium loss during hibernation.
A five-year study of black bears in the Aspen area wrapped up this month with the retrieval of GPS collars from hibernating sows and the collection of data that may yield new information about urban bear populations.
The Roaring Fork Urban Bear Ecology Study had been tracking scores of bruins in the Aspen area since 2005. Bears were fitted with collars in order to track their movements and analyze their travel patterns.
Conservation groups are trying to raise $1.5 million to secure grizzly migration corridors in the Cabinet-Purcell Mountains.
The groups have purchase options on two parcels, totaling 258 acres, near Troy and Noxon, Mont. The parcels were identified as critical grizzly use areas based on wildlife studies and computer modeling done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Trans-border Grizzly Bear Project, said Ryan Lutey, lands director for the Vital Ground Foundation, which would manage the lands. Both parcels are located in valley bottoms.
The grizzly population in northwestern Montana is growing at 3 percent a year, and a management plan is needed before the bear can be removed from threatened species status might go out for public review by the end of the year.
Last year, there were 941 grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, according to Rick Mace, leader of a team tracking the population trend of grizzlies in the ecosystem.
That is up from the 765 bears found in 2008 by fellow researcher Kate Kendall, who counted bears based on DNA testing of hair samples collected at scratching sites.
In this paper the authors tested the ability to use stable isotope analysis (by plucking hair from captured bears) to quantify garbage in bear diet. They contrasted hairs taken from spring harvested bears and bear captures in Missoula, Montana in 2009. Results: 1. Stable isotopes seem promising for actually identifying garbage in diet, but there are still some issues to be worked out; 2. Garbage was not a significant food source for bears around Missoula in 2008.
Minnesota black bears are expanding their range out of forested areas into farmland, leading state Department of Natural Resources researchers to study how and why these bears are adapting to a new habitat.
The department estimates that Minnesota's bear population at 20,000. When food became scarce in forested areas to the east in the mid-1990s, black bears began moving into northwest Minnesota, DNR bear biologist Dave Garshelis said.
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