Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Europe Higher bear density on earth in Europe ?

According to the last edition of our hunters association's magazine, "chasse et nature", there would be a part of Sweden where scientifical studies led with the contributions of local hunter have concluded the higher bear density in the world was in Sweden. Swedish Governement would have tried to increase hunting pressure on Bear for that reason but would now face ecologist pressures in that case.

Which species of bear GV???

brown bears, but they don't grow much bigger than NA black bears.
they have immigrated to my country lately, to one of "my" two capercaille grounds.
haven't seen one yet.

the experts say they're young males walking around, looking for their own territory.
but until the females come, they won't stay and start breeding.

Now that is very interesting. Is there a distinct subspecies of European brown bear??? NA black bears can be deceiving as to size. Seems that the farther North one goes, the bigger the black bears tend to average out.

i've never heard of a Scandinavian subspecie, i thought all European brown was rather small compared to the Alaskan giants.

200kg/440lb live weight is considered a pretty big one.

Siberian Brownies are enormous and they are contiguous. Doesn't the Taiga run clear across the continent?? Regional differences can be quite intersting. This REALLY interests me.

The species is Ursus arctos and is the same as the north American grizzly bear. However, below this species level, there is little agreement!

Some authorities have proposed up to something like 60 subspecies worldwide, but in the past 7 years or so genetic analysis supports about 5 or 9 subspecies (but even that is still subject to much debate and the final concensus is yet to be reached!)

Scandinavia does indeed have the brown bear population with the highest productivity of any in the world.

John

John, that seems to indicate a pretty bear friendly food and range environment. What seems to be the aggression levels for your brand of grizz?? Are they as short fused as NA grizz?

Hi EvilTwin

It is difficult to quantify food resources, but I do recall that a substantial fraction of the bear's energy budget was from ants and grubs.

Our bears are not very aggressive at all. Many have speculated that this is due to centuries of killing any bears that did NOT run away... only the shy bears who ran away were left to reproduce.

I would put their aggression on a par with black bears perhaps.

John

Bears reintroduced in French Pyrrenean mountains, from slovenia, are the source of many problems between shepards, ecologists and hunters (just like the wolves that are apparently coming back in France).

Shepards claim for the bears being terminated. Once, a boar hunter had to kill a female bear, apparently charging at him (bear was with a calf), during a driven hunt. Debate is so very passionnate, ecology extremists are after the man just like St George after a Dragon. Any legal mean has been used to make him condemned just like a war criminal. The 73 years old man is under death treaths and had no quiet life for years.

What is the density of bears per hectare - or square kilometer - or mile in Europe ?
According to the Alaska F&G the densities on parts of the peninsula and Kodiak will reach 2 per square mile average ( 5 per hectare if my math is correct) and concentrations along streams can reach 50 per mile.
How does that compare to the top spots in Europe?

Siberia does have numerous large brown bears but- for whatever reason- there seem to be no verifiable skull measurements that their bears are as large as the peninsula or Kodiak.

Phil,

a hectare being 100x100 meters, 5 per would be dang place to be

Hi Phil

I am aware of 1 study which found 223 bears on 7723 ha

This was with genetic analysis of feces.

I do not recall if this was good or bad habitat though...

John

Above equating to 7.7 bears per square mile.

OK - my math skills have deteriorated some. I was converting hectare to acres rather than square miles.

7723 hectares is just over 29 square miles. If the bear data is correct - and that is the actual year around bear density - rather than an area where they concentrate to feed - it certainly would be the densest population.
However I find those numbers improbable as a year around density unless there was some sort of artificial feeding. It is more likely that it is similar to our salmon streams where one can actually see 40 to 60 bears at one time. Last fall my wife and I could see 54 brown bears- at one time - along a salmon stream less than 1/2 mile in length.

54 bears at one time?
Dang, that is really something.
Betcha those guys could put the hurt on the salmon population!

Hi Phil

No, this was year round population density, no congregating to feed, nor were the bears fed by humans. This is a very large squarish study area, and not a subset of select good habitat around rivers, etc. My previous comments about not recalling if it was good or bad habitat was made with respect to the other 4 areas where brown bears are expanding from in Scandinavia.

Note however, that this estimate was from genetic analysis of feces, and reveals more bears than other methods so unless the Alaska data you speak of was also genetic, it is difficult to compare (here in Sweden, the genetic methods revealed about 40% more bears than mark-recapture or aerial observation, etc. if my recollection is correct).

If you are really interested, shoot me your email address. I could send you a pdf of the scientific paper with these figures, as well as one of my own (on denning site selection but over an even larger study area).

John

I would love to receive the scientific paper with that info. The problem I see with simply doing a scat and hair sample to determine densities is that even migratory bears will be counted along with the locals. If that method was done here - where literally thousands of bears migrate - sometimes over a 100 miles - along a limited number of passes - to reach salmon streams. We too could show enormous population densities.

PM sent

After carefully reading the publications and doing a bit more research it seems that
While the report that listed 223 bears in only 7328 square km is examined it was using a new method and counted bears for two years. All the earlier estimates showed only 20 bears per 1000 square kilometers. that is still impressive.
Current scientific estimates of brown bear numbers in all of Sweden range between 1600-2800 bears in a country of 173,732 square miles.
Alaska estimates there are somewhere between 35,000 -45,000 brown bears living within the it's 586,000 square miles.

Thanks for posting, Phil. It has been a long while since I read the population estimating paper, and I did not want to cite anything I was not sure of (so I only mentioned the figures from the abstract which is all that I had time to re-read).

I am glad that we still live in a world with lotsa bears -- and increasing bear numbers!

John