A Project of Sage Steppe Wild
There aren’t many French brown [ursus arctos] bears left. What are have a badly distorted ratio in favor of males. This might be the result of chance, the result of inbreeding, or male bears competing with each other by killing females’ cubs, but the only solution seems to be a quick trans-location of female bears into France.
French Male Bears In Immediate Need Of More Females. ScienceDaily.
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Comments
I wonder why they have inbreeding in France? Could it be they ate up the bear’s habitat, reducing them to small fragmented populations?
Well somebody needs to donate a few breeding females. I nominate Russia. They have a large population of brown bears.
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
A shortage of females? Are they sure they aren’t in Wyoming? 😉
Joking aside, I think probably the only place brown bears could live in France would be the Pyrenees. Even then, it will probably be a small population that would need fresh blood introduced periodically.
ProWolf in WY says:
A shortage of females? Are they sure they aren’t in Wyoming?
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LMAO!!!!
I couldn’t resist.
ProWolf
They are indeed talking about the bears in the Pyrenaes. It´s a small population that ocassionally is stocked up with fresh blood from Slovenia again only to be poached down again. Hunters also claimed a few examples (the self-defense thing you know). I think it´s pretty bleak there for bears – there are more promising areas in Europe.
Nabeki
There are a few countries in eastern Europe (besides Russia) – with a healthy bear population e.g. Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria. With even too many in Romania now with that breeding programme for hunting purposes in the communist era. But it makes no sense to transplant examples into areas like the Pyrenaes or the Austrian Alps where you already know that their maximum lifespan would be to the next hunting season in autumn – if not poached earlier.
Peter says:
But it makes no sense to transplant examples into areas like the Pyrenaes or the Austrian Alps where you already know that their maximum lifespan would be to the next hunting season in autumn – if not poached earlier.
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That is truly sad.
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
Peter….
I just discovered your blog and galleries, very lovely!!
With even too many in Romania now with that breeding programme for hunting purposes in the communist era.
How did this program work Peter?
I’m not Peter, but I read the story about it. I don’t recall all the details, but the Romanian dictator (Nicolae Ceauşescu) loved to shoot big brown bears.
On his order they were artificially fed and roamed the countryside fat and happy except when the dictator came hunting. He would locate himself near a feeding site and shoot 10 or 20 bears in a day.
When Romanian people finally executed him, the feeding stopped and there were way too many bears for the countryside to support.
I knew Ceauşescu had some interesting beliefs but didn’t know that one. That would have been an interesting study on habituation. Were a lot of people mauled?
Surprisingly less maulings than one might expect. Today , Romania with its fantastic Carpathian Mountains, is a perfect destination for wildlife tourism. Besides the bears they have the largest number of wolves outside Russia. Check it out on the site of the Carpathian Large Carnivore Project http://www.clcp.ro/
Digging deeper into my files I think I should revise my assessment of Romanian bear maulings a bit. According to official statistics, between 1990 and 1999 there were 119 bear/ human incidents. 18 people were killed and 101 injured. 57% of the accidents were connected with raising livestock, 12% with hunting and poaching, 7% were represented by accidents connected with forestry activities, 7% for fruit and mushroom pickers, 4% for activities connected with agriculture and orchards, 3% with hiking and 7% unknown. In the same period, bears were reported to have killed 3232 sheep, 1003 cows, donkeys and horses, 186 pigs and 140 goats. No such statistics are available for the succeeding period and one has to form a picture from the single news items. The most recent report about a really serious incident is from 2004, with 2 persons fatally injured and 11 injured in a single incident, from Januar 09, when a bear attacked a police woman fatally, and of August 09 with another fatal incident.