Home range, movements, and denning chronology of the Grizzly Bear (&lt;em&gt;Ursus arctos&lt;/em&gt;) in west-central Alberta

Graham, Karen; Stenhouse, Gordon B.

doi:10.22621/cfn.v128i3.1600

Cited by 84 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Grizzly bears do not enter the den until November (Graham and Stenhouse 2014), with the berry season running from August to October (Nielsen et al 2004a). Table 5.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the trap: detectability of fixed hair trap DNA methods in grizzly bear population monitoring

2015

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A significant challenge to monitoring wildlife that are secretive, wide ranging, and at low densities is the need to achieve adequate detection rates. Knowledge of spatial patterns in occupancy and the spatial and/or temporal patterns in detectability allows for stratification of traps and improved detection rates. This study investigated how local variation in habitats affected the detectability of grizzly bears in west—central Alberta when monitored with a fixed DNA hair snag design. Bear hair samples were collected in 2011 at 60 sites across 1500 km2 over six sessions, each 14 days in length, between June and August. Microsatellite analysis of hair samples revealed grizzly bear detections at 25 of 60 sites and 21 individual bears. We investigated occupancy and detectability of grizzly bears at the patch and landscape scales using detection histories and program PRESENCE. At the patch scale, grizzly bear detection was highest when sites were placed near streams with clover and in intermediate levels of forest crown closure. At the landscape scale, probability of detection increased near streams and oil and gas wellsites, especially when food resources and wellsite density in the surrounding area was low. Our results highlight the importance of considering local food resources and habitat conditions during placement of fixed DNA hair snag sites. Detectability was not found to vary over time, suggesting that sampling in west—central Alberta can occur at any time between June and August.

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“…Grizzly bears do not enter the den until November (Graham and Stenhouse 2014), with the berry season running from August to October (Nielsen et al 2004a). Table 5.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the trap: detectability of fixed hair trap DNA methods in grizzly bear population monitoring

2015

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“…We chose to use a moving window because the relationship between an individual's home range centre and the surrounding habitat extends beyond the habitat characteristics directly adjacent to the home range centre, especially for wide‐ranging animals. Annual home ranges for grizzly bears range between 200 and 1,250 km 2 (8–20 km radii) depending on sex, age and habitat quality (Graham & Stenhouse, ; McLellan, ; M. Proctor, unpubl. data), thus we used an 8‐km radius (200 km 2 ) as an approximation of the area used by bears during our period of investigation ( c .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of habitat quality and access management on the density of a recovering grizzly bear population

Lamb

Mowat

Reid

et al. 2018

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Abstract1. Human activities have dramatic effects on the distribution and abundance of wildlife. Increased road densities and human presence in wilderness areas have elevated human-caused mortality of grizzly bears and reduced bears' use. Management agencies frequently attempt to reduce human-caused mortality by managing road density and thus human access, but the effectiveness of these actions is rarely assessed.2. We combined systematic, DNA-based mark-recapture techniques with spatially explicit capture-recapture models to estimate population size of a threatened grizzly bear population (Kettle-Granby), following management actions to recover this population. We tested the effects of habitat and road density on grizzly bear population density. We tested both a linear and threshold-based road density metric and investigated the effect of current access management (closing roads to the public).3. We documented an c. 50% increase in bear density since 1997 suggesting increased landscape and species conservation from management agencies played a significant role in that increase. However, bear density was lower where road densities exceeded 0.6 km/km 2 and higher where motorised vehicle access had been restricted. The highest bear densities were in areas with large tracts of few or no roads and high habitat quality. Access management bolstered bear density in small areas by 27%. Synthesis and applications.Our spatially explicit capture-recapture analysis demonstrates that population recovery is possible in a multi-use landscape when management actions target priority areas. We suggest that road density is a useful surrogate for the negative effects of human land use on grizzly bear populations, but spatial configuration of roads must still be considered. Reducing roads will increase grizzly bear density, but restricting vehicle access can also achieve this goal. We demonstrate that a policy target of reducing human access by managing road density below 0.6 km/km 2 , while ensuring areas of high habitat quality have no roads, is a reasonable compromise between the need for road access and population recovery goals. Targeting closures to areas of highest habitat quality would benefit grizzly bear population recovery the most.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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“…However, we restricted our analysis to resident bears with location data for ≥50% of the days between 1 May and 15 October within a given year (Section B, available online in Supporting Information), resulting in a final dataset of 130 resident grizzly bears (57 M, 73 F; Table S1). We truncated the final location data of translocated and resident grizzly bears to the time period between 1 May and 15 October to avoid the influence of denning behavior on movement (Graham and Stenhouse ). We applied kernel density estimation (Worton , Seaman and Powell ) within R package adehabitatHR (Calenge ) to estimate annual home ranges of translocated and resident grizzly bears.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the success of grizzly bear translocations

Milligan¹,

Brown²,

Hobson

et al. 2018

J Wildl Manag

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Evaluations of wildlife translocation can be traditional assessments of survival and reproductive success or can be expanded to include valuable but seldom used measures of behavior and physiology in reference to baseline data from a resident population. In Alberta, Canada where grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) are listed as a threatened species, there has been research on resident grizzly bear populations but limited follow‐up of translocated individuals associated with management actions. We determined an outcome for 110 grizzly bear translocation events (77 failed events, 33 successful events) between 1974 and 2014. We used logistic regression to investigate the effects of individual bear characteristics, management strategies, and habitat factors on translocation success. A translocation event was successful if the bear did not require further management action and if the bear survived at least one year without homing. We also compared the home range size, habitat selection, and denning behavior of translocated bears to the resident population over time to assess the long‐term effects of translocation. The odds of translocation success were higher if bears were moved early in the year and decreased by 47% for each unit increase in the level of mortality risk (based on road density, water, and edge features) at the release site. The odds of homing decreased substantially at translocation distances >100 km, but bears translocated outside the Bear Management Area (BMA) of capture had annual home ranges that were 3.25 times larger on average than resident bears. Translocated bears were initially selecting high quality habitat similar to areas used by resident bears, but this behavior appeared to decline after the first year of translocation. Den entry dates, den exit dates, and the denning period of translocated bears did not differ significantly from resident bears. Our findings can aid managers in making more informed decisions when considering translocation as a tool for managing human–bear conflict or supporting grizzly bear conservation efforts. © 2018 The Wildlife Society.

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Home range, movements, and denning chronology of the Grizzly Bear (<em>Ursus arctos</em>) in west-central Alberta

Cited by 84 publications

References 37 publications

In the trap: detectability of fixed hair trap DNA methods in grizzly bear population monitoring

In the trap: detectability of fixed hair trap DNA methods in grizzly bear population monitoring

Effects of habitat quality and access management on the density of a recovering grizzly bear population

Factors affecting the success of grizzly bear translocations

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