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All Research Articles
A new study from the University of Calgary suggests you might be saving an animal's life when you take a walk in the woods.
The study, published in the journal Public Library of Science One Wednesday, found that while predatory animals like wolves, cougars, and bears tend to stay away when humans are in the area, prey like elk, moose, and deer are more likely to stick around.
Radio-collared bears will continue to be fair game for hunters under a decision announced today by Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr.
Ely bear researcher Lynn Rogers had sought a ruling from the DNR that would make it illegal for hunters to shoot radio-collared research bears emblazoned with Day-Glo ribbons.
Rogers said he was “very disappointed, considering the very strong public opinion in favor of protection.”
BILLINGS, Mont. — Wildlife officials in the Northern Rockies are considering an overhaul to a program that tests bear-resistant containers in response to increased demands on the government-subsidized effort.
Gregg Losinski with the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee says the group's seal of approval for bear-resistant trash bins, campground food boxes and other containers has drawn interest from across the country and as far away as Eastern Europe.
Containers are certified by the committee if they survive intact after being filled with food and placed in an enclosure with a captive grizzly bear. As demand for such products increases, wildlife officials are considering contracting out the testing through a nonprofit organization and increasing certification fees.
Some mammals have an attractive solution for coping with long winters-sleep through them. Black bears (Ursus americanus) for example can hibernate for five to seven months of the year, going without food and water or the light of day.
Fat loss and perhaps a little grogginess aside, when they emerge from their dens in the springtime, the bears seem no worse for the wear. The secrets to their successful hibernation, in which bone and muscle mass remain intact despite long periods of nonuse, have eluded scientists, who had trouble consistently monitoring the large animals in naturalistic conditions.
Hibernating, it turns out, is much more complicated than one might think.
Research published in the latest issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology illustrates a complex series of changes that occur in grizzly bears' hearts as they hibernate. The changes guard against complications that could arise from greatly reduced activity.
A grizzly hibernates five to six months of the year. During that time, its heart rate slows drastically from around 84 beats per minute when active to around 19. "If a human heart were to slow down like this, you'd see very detrimental things happening," said Bryan Rourke, a professor at Cal State Long Beach who worked on the research with his graduate student, Nathan Barrows.
Not all bears hibernate in the winter, especially the bears at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone.
The grizzlies stay up for the entire year, making them ideal candidates for bear-resistant container testing during the winter season.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear manager for the Missoula region James Jonkel, Patti Sowka of the Living with Wildlife Foundation, located in Condon and the staff at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center held a unique wintertime bear-resistant container testing session last Thursday.
NORTH ELBA, N.Y. — It was built to be impenetrable, from its “super rugged transparent polycarbonate housing” to its intricate double-tabbed lid that would keep campers’ food in and bears’ paws out.
The BearVault 500 withstood the ravages of the test bears at the Folsom City Zoo in California. It has stymied mighty grizzlies weighing up to 1,000 pounds in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park.
But in one corner of the Adirondacks, campers started to notice that the BearVault, a popular canister designed to keep food and other necessities safe, was being compromised. First through circumstantial evidence, then from witness reports, it became clear that in most cases, the conqueror was a relatively tiny, extremely shy middle-aged black bear named Yellow-Yellow.
Feb 2, 2011 — Media Coverage: Scats and Dogs
Every dog owner who has ever had to pull his pet off a crusty pile of old scat knows that some kind of ancient, complex relationship exists between man’s best friend and a fecal deposit of any kind.
But no one understands that like Sam Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. Wasser, an endocrinologist, studies animal populations by looking at the hormone levels of selected individuals. One of the best sources of information? Everyday excrement.
Members of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee – made up of state, federal and tribal agencies responsible for bear management – ran a pool in 2003 to guess the number of grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, an area that includes Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
“Everybody put $20 in an envelope and it got put in a safety deposit box until I came out with my estimate,” research biologist Katherine Kendall explained at a presentation in Libby last Wednesday. “Every single one of them were low – lower than the estimate.”
The author tested the efficacy of aversive conditioning (AC) and conditioned taste aversion (CTA) on American black bears (Ursus americanus) in Whistler, British Columbia. The study used AC (rubber bullets fired from a shotgun and marbles fired from a sling shot) in an attempt to increase bear wariness toward humans and decrease the time bears spend in human developments. Thiabendazole, an emetic with low toxicity, was used to teach bears to associate illness with specific attractants that cause human-bear conflict.
Lily the famous black bear gave birth to two cubs today, according to a Facebook post by Sue Mansfield, a biologist at the Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center in Ely.
One cub was born at 1:51 p.m. and the second was born at 3:03.
She wrote on the center’s blog that at 5:08 p.m. Thursday, Lily began clenching her teeth. That was what signaled the beginning of labor last year before she gave birth to her cub Hope while thousands watched on a web camera.
The bears have been holed up in their den since October and a web camera installed last month has chronicled the pair’s activity.
Who knew grizzly bears knew CPR?
At least, that's what it looks like when residents of the Montana Grizzly Discovery Center test the latest bear-resistant food container. In a video shown to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee meeting on Wednesday, a 1,000-pound silvertip placed its paws just like it shows in the Red Cross handbook and pumped away on a lightweight backpacking jug.
The patient did not survive.
Patti Swoka of Living With Wildlife Foundation displayed the jug during the IGBC's morning session: It was snapped in half. She also held up another container almost identical to the failed model. That one survived the grizzly's "CPR" - and everything else the Discovery Center's product-testing bears could inflict. And it won the right to declare its product IGBC-standard bear resistant.
The Get Bear Smart Society is working to record — and reduce — the number of wildlife deaths on regional highways.
Dawn Johnson, project coordinator for the society, explained that although there were 10 confirmed bear deaths on local highways in 2010, the number might be much higher. The society is putting out a call to the public to report any past incidents of vehicle collisions with animals.
This report to experimentally tests the efficacy of education and enforcement in altering human behavior to better secure attractants (garbage) from bears. We conducted 3 experiments in Aspen CO, USA to evaluate: 1) on-site education in communal dwellings and construction sites, 2) Bear Aware educational campaign in residential neighborhoods, and 3) elevated law enforcement at two levels in the core business area of Aspen.
Preliminary findings are in from the first six months of the Pennsylvania Game Commission's Urban Bear Study, and they show some surprising results. If anyone within the commission had been worried that these bears' citified environment might protect them from harvest, they need not worry any longer.
The game commission fitted the bears with GPS collars with cell phone technology which feeds researchers information in the form of text messages.
Nevada Voters Greatly Prefer Non-Lethal Methods of Managing Black Bears
A statewide survey conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. has revealed that Nevada voters strongly oppose hunting black bears with dogs and hunting bears in the spring when mother bears are nursing dependent cubs - both of which have been proposed as components of Nevada's first black bear trophy hunt.
Voters strongly agree, by 74 to 20 percent, that the state should prioritize non-lethal methods of solving conflicts between people and bears. The survey results were consistent in every geographic region of the state and in every political demographic, with all regions and all political affiliations in favor of non-lethal solutions.
Ely, MN (Northland's NewsCenter) Bear researchers near Ely have made history again!
They've launched another live signal from a remote bear den to witness the on-going drama of a famous family of black bears.
In this week's "Nature Matters" David Hoole brings us the continuing story of Hope and Lily as they await the possibility of an expanding family.
What do you say to a 22-stone wild bear when, alone and unarmed, you come face to face with it in the heart of the forest? My 20 years as a wildlife cameraman had certainly not furnished me with any useful suggestions. The mythology surrounding American black bears suggests that whatever you do manage to squeak out could be the last thing you ever say. Black bears attack more people than any other species, even more than grizzly bears. They were responsible for at least 40 known human fatalities in the last century.
GREEN RIVER, Wyo. — For decades, dogs have helped protect sheep herds in Wyoming and other Western states from the wily coyote and other predators.
But expanding populations of federally protected large carnivores over three decades are taking their toll, on both sheep and canines. The number of protection dogs killed by grizzly bears and gray wolves is increasing each year.
A longtime Sublette County ranching couple is researching and advocating the adoption of Old World predator control techniques in this new world of large-carnivore recovery.
Remote waterfront property has its limitations when it comes to comfortable, long-term winter accommodation.
It's wet and cold, the noise of crashing waves can be disturbing if you're planning on snoring away a few months -- and there's always the possibility that packs of wolves will sneak up while you're sleeping and eat you.
None of that, though, apparently deters Vancouver Island black bears.
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