Human-bear conflicts cause annoyance, financial losses, injuries, and even death to people. In poorer parts of the world, conflicts with bears can affect local economies. Retaliation against bears may threaten the future of small, isolated populations. Our survey of the world's bear experts revealed that the problem is worsening in terms of severity of conflicts and their impact on bear conservation on all four continents inhabited by bears. However, the main drivers of conflict, and its manifestations, differ among bear species. We reviewed human-bear conflict management plans from which we identified 10 categories of mitigating interventions that together comprise a ubiquitous bear conflict management toolbox. Within this toolbox, the peer-reviewed literature indicates heavy reliance on education and physical barriers for conflict mitigation. In customizing these general approaches to local circumstances, it is important to be mindful of starkly varying geopolitical and social circumstances. There is a pressing need to improve transfer of knowledge from places with active empirical research on mitigation (especially North America), and adapting methodologies to other parts of the world. We saw little evidence of evaluation and adaptive management in the conflict plans. Failure to mitigate conflicts may reduce society's tolerance of bears and diminish conservation efforts.

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Global Positioning System (GPS) telemetry is used extensively to study animal distribution and resource selection patterns but is susceptible to biases resulting from data omission and spatial inaccuracies. These data errors may cause misinterpretation of wildlife habitat selection or spatial use patterns. We used both stationary test collars and collared free‐ranging American black bears (Ursus americanus) to quantify systemic data loss and location error of GPS telemetry in mountainous, old‐growth temperate forests of Olympic National Park, Washington, USA. We developed predictive models of environmental factors that influence the probability of obtaining GPS locations and evaluated the ability of weighting factors derived from these models to mitigate data omission biases from collared bears. We also examined the effects of microhabitat on collar fix success rate and examined collar accuracy as related to elevation changes between successive fixes. The probability of collars successfully obtaining location fixes was positively associated with elevation and unobstructed satellite view and was negatively affected by the interaction of overstory canopy and satellite view. Test collars were 33% more successful at acquiring fixes than those on bears. Fix success rates of collared bears varied seasonally and diurnally. Application of weighting factors to individual collared bear fixes recouped only 6% of lost data and failed to reduce seasonal or diurnal variation in fix success, suggesting that variables not included in our model contributed to data loss. Test collars placed to mimic bear bedding sites received 16% fewer fixes than randomly placed collars, indicating that microhabitat selection may contribute to data loss for wildlife equipped with GPS collars. Horizontal collar errors of >800 m occurred when elevation changes between successive fixes were >400 m. We conclude that significant limitations remain in accounting for data loss and error inherent in using GPS telemetry in coniferous forest ecosystems and that, at present, resource selection patterns of large mammals derived from GPS telemetry should be interpreted cautiously.

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Abs t ract:eristics of black bears (Ursus americanus) were studied in west-central Idaho during 1973-77. Den entry and emergence varied among bears and years, and the denning season extended from mid-October until mid-April. Thirty-one radio-instrumented bears were handled 83 times in 65 different dens. Forty-seven (72%) of the 65 dens were ground dens excavated into a hillside or under the base of a tree, stump, or shrub. Thirteen (20%) dens were located in the base of hollow trees and 5 (8%) in hollow logs or rock cavities. Bears denned at various elevations, slopes, and aspects, and under a variety of canopy coverages, but some selection for snow and vegetative cover characteristics at different elevations and aspects was noted. No significant differences in den dimensions were noted for specific sex or age classes of bears, except that adult males dug larger entrances (P < 0.05) than other bears. Four instances of den reuse were observed. Int. Conf. Bear Res. and Manage. 5: 79-86 Craighead and Craighead (1972) first used telemetry to obtain quantitative data on grizzly bear (U. arctos) denning ecology. Subsequently, many researchers have used telemetry to study the ecological and physiological parameters of denned bears (