Brown Bears (Info, Pics and Videos)

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(01-24-2019, 05:40 PM)brotherbear Wrote: While I do not believe that the grizzly was ever the monster portrayed by many early American pioneers, I do believe that they have been somewhat tamed by the modern breech-load rifle. When I read from such sources as Lewis and Clark, I notice that the trouble was always started by the men. Nevertheless, in those days perhaps the grizzly was more prone to charge than he is today. The grizzly comes from a background of competing with mega-predators in Pleistocene N. America. When you make a count of them, there is no small wonder for the grizzly's inherited attitude. Also, as stated by Doug Peacock, over the past decades, the most predatory grizzlies have been systematically culled from the population. Those being the most aggressive. Also, in reading a number of books about the historical grizzly, they all agree on grizzlies of the prairie and in the Sierra Nevada Mountains being larger and more aggressive than those of the Rocky Mountains.

 Brown bears would kill many livestock, here is the research
 
Bear-Livestock Conflicts

Coexistence in a Crowded World: Brown Bears and Livestock Depredation
By Kimberly Rigano
Introduction
People have a history of exploiting carnivore populations. Humans view carnivores as dangerous thieves. In reality, humans and carnivores are just species which happen to share similar needs for high calorie diets and large amounts of land bringing us into competition with one another. This competition often involves food resources and in particular livestock. Bears are particularly large predators with voracious appetites. Conflict between bears and humans is a worldwide problem occurring in “hotspots” where anthropogenic attractants and bear habitat overlap. Conflict is actually increasing in many areas where bears were once eliminated and have now been reintroduced or are expanding their populations. This is in part due to re-growth of forested areas throughout North America providing increased bear habitat. Conflict involving livestock depredation may also be attributed to modern livestock management. People no longer practice traditional methods of livestock management and as a society have effectively forgotten how to coexist with bears.
What is Causing Bears to Attack Livestock?

Bears are omnivores meaning that they will eat a variety of foods from plant matter to insects and meat. They are also hibernators and must consume huge amounts of food during the fall to gain enough weight to survive winter. During this time they can gain over 3 lbs each day (6). Because bears have such high resource demands, it may appear that bears kill livestock out of necessity to fulfill their daily energy requirements. However, in most areas, their diet consists of over 90% vegetation, and depredation does not correlate with the abundance of natural resources indicating that bears do not attack livestock because they are lacking natural sources of food. Data on livestock losses in Europe show that depredation is not the result of large carnivore populations either, as the small population of 25 to 55 bears in Norway kill more livestock than the more than 2,000 bears in Sweden (4).
Instead, attacks on agricultural animals are related to livestock management. Bone yards where ranchers deposit carcasses are the main attractant associated with bear conflict. Certain livestock operations are also more high risk than others. In almost every country where bears and sheep exist together, sheep account for the majority of livestock killed by bears. Sheep are smaller and more vulnerable than cattle with their only defense being their strong flocking instincts. Lambing and calving areas also have high probabilities of bear predation because newly born animals are easy prey. Other livestock management characteristics correlated with high predation rates include animals which are untended for long periods and those that are left out at night when the majority of bear attacks occur.

Another major factor associated with predation is habitat. Most depredation events occur near forest cover with permanent sources of water because this is ideal bear habitat which often overlaps with livestock grazing. In Norway, high levels of depredation are correlated with a large number of sheep grazed near forested areas overnight (4). In the Himalayan Mountains, the majority of sheep are killed during the fall hyperphagic period when bears have an insatiable appetite to gain weight before hibernation. However, the fall was also when sheep were moved into higher elevation alpine meadows where bears in this region reside. Depredation was also associated with lack of human presence (2). In many countries in Europe, people have abandoned their traditional lifestyles of living with and protecting livestock. Today, bear populations are on the rise, especially in Europe and specific areas of the U.S. such as the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in Idaho and Montana and Yellowstone National Park, but people remain resistant to changes in livestock management.
Is Depredation a Learned Behavior?

Livestock are an easily accessible food source compared to their wild counterparts. Thus, when bears come in contact with livestock, they often kill more animals than they can eat leaving carcasses behind. Bears are opportunistic feeders, so this is normal adaptive behavior for them as it is advantageous to kill multiple animals at once when predation is easy. This occurs less in the wild because multiple kills are typically difficult with wild ungulates (6). Near Yellowstone, all bears that had access to sheep attacked them. Of the 37 bears collared, only four returned to the same areas at the same time of year after predating livestock (5). All bears that killed livestock exhibited normal foraging behavior similar to that of other bears. This indicates that killing livestock is not a unique behavior that’s only learned by a few problem bears. Livestock depredation is the result of easy foraging opportunities.

There is evidence to suggest that bears do learn some foraging behaviors from their mother. However, in Yellowstone, yearling offspring of problem bears that were then separated from their mother were not more likely to kill livestock than cubs of non-conflict bears, so this is not a behavior acquired during the first year of life. Also, bear depredation is usually concentrated in a few hotspots, and predation rate does not decrease when a few problem bears are removed (6). This indicates that predation is more strongly correlated to habitat attributes. Males are implicated in depredation events more than females. This may be due to the tendency for males to travel more and the greater likelihood for them to come into contact with livestock. There also may be something intrinsic about male behavior that causes them to attack livestock such as boldness or aggression. Yet, few studies have been done on personality differences between conflict and non-conflict bears. Larger male body size and dietary requirements also may cause them to search for food with more protein than females. All bears that attacked full-grown cattle outside of Yellowstone were adult males (5). Bears of all age classes killed sheep, but juveniles exhibited less caution in doing so and were caught and killed more often as a result. One yearling and juvenile male in Wyoming together killed over 30 sheep in one night (6). Adult bears typically kill one or two sheep on the outer edges of the herd and are thus better at avoiding herders. Bears may learn to improve their ability to kill livestock without getting caught. This may mean that juveniles do not necessarily predate livestock at a higher rate; they may just get caught more.

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Implications

One of the most significant implications of livestock depredation is that it decreases public support for bear conservation which can impact on the probability of survival for bear populations. In fact, plans to reintroduce bears to the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho were abandoned due to public opposition. For ranchers and livestock owners, hostility toward carnivores, and in particular bears, originates from financial losses incurred by bear predation. Bears do not actually account for a large percentage of overall livestock losses, typically less than 1%, but locally losses can be significant. In Montana, 75% of documented conflict events occurred in “hotspots” that comprised only 8% of the study area (10). On the Upper Green River Cattle Allotment in western Wyoming, uncompensated financial impacts from 1995–2004 due to grizzly bear attacks on calves were $222,500 (9). In the Targhee National Forest twice as many sheep were lost as a result of herding practices as those killed in bear attacks, and yet most livestock managers believe carnivores pose the greatest threat to their animals (5).
Depredation also results in the death of bears when individuals are killed by ranchers as well as legally by the Fish and Wildlife service. Thus, conflict over livestock is a significant source of mortality for brown bears especially in the small, isolated populations such as those that exist in the lower 48 states. Approximately 7% of all human‐caused grizzly bear mortalities between 1998 and 2011 in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem were due to management removal actions associated with livestock depredations. At least 51 of 89 management removals were due to attractants such as carcasses that could have been avoided (7). These high removal rates do not always prevent livestock depredation and often result in individual bears being killed that were not involved in the conflict. Reply