Determinants and patterns of the endangered brown bear Ursus arctos habitat use in the French Pyrenees revealed by occupancy modeling

Abstract

The Pyrenean brown bear (Ursus arctos) in the mountainous border between France and Spain is one of the smallest and most endangered populations of large carnivores in Europe. Here, we aimed at assessing trends in brown bear habitat use in the Pyrenees and determining the underlying environmental and anthropogenic drivers. Using detection/non-detection data collected between 2008 and 2014 through non-invasive methods, we developed occupancy models to investigate the dynamic of brown bear habitat use in the Pyrenees accounting for local colonization and extinction processes. First, we found two non-connected occupancy cores, one located in the West and another in the Center of the Pyrenees, with an overall significant decrease in habitat use between 2008 and 2014. Second, we showed a negative correlation between human density and bear occupancy in agreement with previous studies on brown bear habitat suitability. Our results confirm the critically endangered status of the Pyrenean population of brown bears.

Identifying priority conservation areas for a recovering brown bear population in Greece using citizen science data

“…This is likely to be the case for plants, but for free‐ranging mammals with large home ranges, the same variable can also have two opposite ecological effects, with bears either avoiding populated areas (e.g. Naves et al ., ; Martin et al ., ; Piédallu et al ., ) because they are perceived as risky, or being attracted to them, as they can provide shelter and/or resources (Elfström et al ., ). Such difficulty of classifying variables can create limitations because if some features appear both in the ecological and in the observation process, the model is non‐identifiable (Fithian & Hastie, ).…”

“…Brown bears are globally considered by the IUCN as species of Least Concern. They are the only Ursid in Europe, where several populations are small, isolated and threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation and by human‐bear conflicts (Swenson & Sandegren, ; Bautista et al ., ; Piédallu et al ., ). This is particularly the case for brown bears in Greece where the species reaches its southernmost European distribution and is considered to be endangered, numbering fewer than 500 individuals (Karamanlidis et al ., ).…”

Identifying priority conservation areas for recovering large carnivores using citizen science data

“…This is likely to be the case for plants, but for free-ranging mammals with large home ranges, the same variable can also have two opposite ecological effects, with bears either avoiding populated areas (e.g. Naves et al , 2003, Martin et al , 2012, Piédallu et al , 2017) because they are perceived as risky, or being attracted to them, as they can provide shelter and/or resources (Elfström et al , 2014). Such difficulty of classifying variables can create limitations because if some features appear both in the ecological and in the observation process, the model is non-identifiable (Fithian & Hastie, 2013).…”

“…Brown bears are globally considered by the IUCN as species of Least Concern. In Europe several populations are small, isolated and threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation and by human - bear conflicts (Swenson & Sandegren, 2000, Bautista et al , 2016, Piédallu et al , 2017). This is particularly the case for brown bears in Greece where the species reaches its southernmost European distribution and is considered to be endangered, numbering fewer than 500 individuals (Karamanlidis et al , 2015).…”