Working Together for Grizzly Bears: A Collaborative Approach to Estimate Population Abundance in Northwest Alberta, Canada

Abstract

Grizzly bears are a threatened species in Alberta, Canada, and their conservation and management is guided by a provincial recovery plan. While empirical abundance and densities estimates have been completed for much of the province, empirical data are lacking for the northwest region of Alberta, a 2.8 million hectare area called Bear Management Area 1 (BMA 1). In part, this is due to limited staff capacity and funding to cover a vast geographic area, and a boreal landscape that is difficult to navigate. Using a collaborative approach, a multi-stakeholder working group called the Northwest Grizzly Bear Team (NGBT) was established to represent land use and grizzly bear interests across BMA 1. Collectively, we identified our project objectives using a Theory of Change approach, to articulate our interests and needs, and develop common ground to ultimately leverage human, social, financial and policy resources to implement the project. This included establishing 254 non-invasive genetic hair corral sampling sites across BMA 1, and using spatially explicit capture-recapture models to estimate grizzly bear density. Our results are two-fold: first we describe the process of developing and then operating within a collaborative, multi-stakeholder governance arrangement, and demonstrate how our approach was key to both improving relationships across stakeholders but also delivering on our grizzly bear project objectives; and, secondly we present the first-ever grizzly bear population estimate for BMA 1, including identifying 16 individual bears and estimating density at 0.70 grizzly bears/1,000 km2-the lowest recorded density of an established grizzly bear population in Alberta. Our results are not only necessary for taking action on one of Alberta's iconic species at risk, but also demonstrate the value and power of collaboration to achieve a conservation goal.

Conservation through connection: Approaches to engaging communities in applied grizzly bear research

“…While it is well known that the field of conservation science has historically provided extensive biological information on wildlife, there is increasing recognition that conservation problems are often social in nature (Soulé 1985;Bennett et al, 2017;Hughes and Nielsen, 2019). Mainstream conservation science that was informed solely by biological or ecological sciences may not acknowledge the integral role people play in conservation outcomes (Peterson et al, 2019;Hughes et al, 2021). Ensuring community support for management approaches can start with meaningful engagement of people in scientific research and conservation decision-making, something that is often lacking despite multiple different approaches that can be tailored to specific communities (Bennett et al, 2017).…”

“…In addition to using my findings to help inform Alberta's grizzly bear recovery policy, I developed important relationships with community members, building appreciation for and sharing knowledge between each other. As a result, our relationships helped to co-produce a population inventory for an understudied grizzly bear population in northwest Alberta, implement bear safety outreach, and design and implementation a local citizen science program called GrizzTracker (Hughes et al, 2021;Hughes et al, 2022). More broadly, my experiences engaging with a diversity of community members in applied research have been invaluable in informing other conservation projects at local and global scales (Morehouse et al, 2020;Fleury and Hughes, 2021;Kimaro and Hughes, 2021;Morehouse et al, 2021;Sibanda et al, 2021a).…”

“…Community engagement is not a cookie cutter approach, and scientists may need to think outside the box and embrace fluidity in working with communities (e.g., Maund et al, 2020;Hughes et al, 2021). In many cases, there are issues of trust between landowners, stakeholders, and government, rooted in historical contexts that can be complex and take time and sensitivity to navigate.…”

“…Some challenges include building mutual respect, trust, and reciprocity between researchers and communities, which takes time, effort, and a healthy dose of skill (i.e., listening, facilitation, public participation techniques, etc. ; Morehouse et al, 2020;Hughes et al, 2021). Also, qualitative methods can be overlooked or underappreciated by the more traditionally trained quantitative conservation scientists (Rust et al, 2017).…”

Using community science to advance grizzly bear conservation

“…In Alberta, Canada, the distribution of grizzly (brown) bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) overlaps multiple different human land use types, from the south of the province along the Rocky Mountains and foothills, and into the northwestern boreal landscape (Nielsen et al 2009;Morehouse and Boyce 2016;Hughes et al 2021). As a result of an increasing human population and related land use, habitat fragmentation and loss, grizzly bears faced increased mortality across the province (Hughes et al 2020(Hughes et al , 2021.…”