Author: Alfonso Hartasánchez

Introduction.

The use of automatic shot cameras to study the Brown Bear population in the Cantabric Range was a method already used during 1994 and 1995 in Somiedo Natural Reserve by a team of investigators coming from the Oviedo University and the Asturias Principality Regional Government (Doñana Acta Vertebrata, 23 (2), 1996 pages 189-199). The photographic method allowed to take 9 pictures during the working period that was enforced by the use of carcass baits.

The use of photographic kits to get information about wild fauna inhabiting an area becomes a very useful tool. This reason led Fapas during 1998 to develop some experiences with automatic shot kits, directly related with the need to know certain aspects of bear living, their ecology in the territory and some other factors that might be useful for the conservationist management of the specie.

Seven years after, the yet scarce results, may be demonstrative enough of the utility of this field method that brings a large interest from a conservationist point of view, highlighting the non-interference in the behaviour rules of the animals and the obtaining in real time of information that properly handled allows quick and accurate actions.

Analysis of the contents of 929 excrements from the whole Cantabric Range (Clevenger y Purroy, 1991; Clevenger et al., 1992) proves a continuous presence of rests of livestock got as carrion.

Alfonso Hartasánchez

Material

Up to date conventional analogic cameras have been used, loading a 35 mm. colour film and sensibility ranges from 400 to 800 ASA.

Every camera is provided with a built-in dating a timing system. Some of them has a mini-computer that allows a fine tuning of the system to get a higher level of information about the working period of the camera.

Except these ones, a little bit more complex, up to now the kits are manually built. On the one hand the camera is bought and on the other hand the automatic shot kits are built-in and manually connected. This is to say, they are not originally purchased built-in systems, but actually a quite home-made process, but effective, is used as it allows us to modify and improve the field working techniques depending of the working experiences.

The photographic kit is composed of three different automatic shots systems:

• Motion-sensitive triggered cameras. Sensors similar than the ones usually used in the supermarket gates that opened when getting near them.
• Infrared-ray shot cameras. A little bit more complex, shooting when an animal intercepts the infrared ray.
• ‘Plate’ shot cameras as one of the experts that made them use to say, Jesús Esarte, a ranger in Navarra, who is in charge of the photographic tasks with bears in Navarra. The plate is allocated in the ground and when an animal steps on, the contacts that shots the camera are activated.

And one of the more needed materials to do this work is patience, although it is necessary quite some imagination, too.

Both things will lead to the fact that every failure in the system as the camera was not allocated in the proper place, or the kits failures, provide us with some experience that will bring excellent results as time passes by, reflected in some pictures that leave us open-mouthed as they show us some instants of the life of animal, unknown up to that moment.

Method

We have chosen the most simple method as the target is to get information from bears without interfering their behaviour.

At no moment during work baits or fetchings have been used and for the allocation of cameras it has not been followed a method based on the characterisation of the habitat quality of bear, but it has been chosen places that offered more success possibilities from our knowledge of the bear habits in the territory.

The spots where photographic kits are allocated are quite diverse. At ground level, tied to tree trunks, tied to a top branch of any tree. Everything is dependant to the spot and moment conditions. More hidden in case people use to go along this place that might stole the kits or, as it has happened, if it should be the case to capture any furtive hunter ‘in fraganti’ at the same time we try to take bear pictures.

    
Objectives

The main objective of the work is focused on two well differentiated lines:

• To essay the application of any working method with which FAPAS didn’t have any previous experience and to evaluate which are the better techniques, the most suitable, useful and practical ones.
• To get as much as possible pictures of free bears in order to analyse the information obtained and to get conclusions about its usefulness in the Brown Bear conservation

Results

From the beginning of the work up to September 2005, we got 397 pictures of Brown Bear.

It is remarkable that the work has allowed in parallel to get valuable information about some other species, specially about wolf, who due to its peculiarity, deserves a separated analysis inside this photographic work. In all, the number of pictures of free wolfs got was 187.

We consider it is interesting to already establish as results a series of aspects specified with more or less accuracy from some components. The use of photographic kits and the knowledge of the territory. The first positive result of this working method is to realise that cameras themselves only allow a partial information that must be to a great extent interpreted. Therefore, we need another complement of large importance: knowledge of the territory, that in the case of Fapas is got from the development of some other working techniques, as the journeys, that allow us to obtain larger information about Brown Bear and its habitat. We consider this information as efficient for the definition of the following aspects:

Specimens individualisation

This is an information that may be complemented to offer a higher reliability with the individualisation of the specimens with the size of the footprints if it is possible to take them in areas next to the allocation of the photo kit.

This is a non-permanent information, this is to say, once an specimen is identified, chances to keep this identification disappear as time passes by, as bears use to shed fur, are growing, etc. But when we work on a certain area, not very extensive, the method may allow us to know with a certain extent the number of bears that use that area.

PHYSIC IDENTIFICATION

Photo kits allow us to know with masimum margin of twenty days, the status of the bear population, being us able to determine following aspects:

 1º Physic Identification

Pictures allow us to check how really each of the specimens are. To have one picture taken of a fatty bear points us that it is in good condition to go through winter, at the same we can assess it has been nourishing in a quiet area.

We should not forget that in winter wild boar hunts begin and therefore, if they are done inside bear nourishing areas, troubles may cause the bear to leave those areas, being forced to look food in areas with less resources.

We can think this is happening if during a period with abundant food and a lot of wild boar beatings, we have pictures taken of bears not so fat as we expected.

We can detect also the effect of poacching: bears with fur marks having fallen but having been able to free themselves from traps or a one-handed bear caused by an snare of having been shoot by a rifle.

This method is specially important in the physic identification and to check the status of the yearling cubs or second-year ones, already emancipated from their mother and forced to find food by themselves with no help.

STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION

But even so, pictures bring documentation of a great interest, so that, in case the method in used continuously over an area, we can get to have registered nearly the totality of the bears who roam there, either in a stable way (females and cubs) or sporadically (adults and sub-adults).

We can get to determine which is the most dominant male, as it is photographed continuously in a short term along the different control points spread through an area.

In the case of females, the task is easier as their tendency to filopatry make them easier to be controlled along specific areas. And at the same time, how many young sub-adults roam in the territory.

BEHAVIOUR RULES

Bear seems to love trees, they don’t have a pee, but as we see, they embrace them, leaving their corporal scent. That much that there are trees that gather such an amount of material, that removing it (fur, mainly) we can genetically identify bears into an area.

The method complemented with some other monitoring techniques and control applied year after year allows to get statistical data and therefore, to reach to have an approximation to the real number of bears that roam into an area.

For instance, data brought by FAPAS from the area of Somiedo and Belmonte in Asturias during several years, were coincident with the genetic research work carried out by the Superior Council of Scientific Researches.

In this way, the knowledge got, becomes into a wonderful tool for the specie management. How many there are, areas where they roam, how they are, data that must allow us interventions to guarantee survival of the specie.

A larger ability to evaluate the influence of poaching and specially to anticipate to illegal hunt if we know that an area is traditionally used to put traps. To apply the strategy for the conservation of Brown Bear, avoiding aggressive actions over bear habitat.

Trubia valley, a practical example

This is a zone with a large human presence, where bears’ presence was only detected when some damages caused by bears were reported. In year 2004, it was only known the sporadic presence of a couple of specimens. One single year of work in this area allowed us to detect seven bears, two out of them born that same year.

Bear, in spite of its physical characteristics, is an animal with a large ability to go unnoticed in a territory. Photographic work exposed the reality of the population status and therefore, it allowed to take conservation measures inside a territory where, up to that moment very few had been done to favour bear, specially control of poaching, since we know now there had been dead bears no longer than four years ago.

Follow-up of she-bears with cubs

About bears’ reproduction there is few information and inside the conservation strategy to know the number of she-bears is a large importance need. A low number of she-bears as it happens in the West Core of the Cantabric range makes evident a bad survival status.

Because of this, inside the work dynamic with bears, an special importance is given to control and follow-up of she-bears with cubs. How many she-bears with reproduction capabilities do we have? With how many cubs do they go out of the den when winter ends and how many cubs do survive?

Some difficult questions to which we find answers to a great extent with the technique of the photographic follow-up.

1º Follow-up of she-bears with cubs

The knowledge of the territory and the experience help us to place photo kits in strategic spots where we know sooner or later we will succeed to have she-bears with cubs photographed.

If it is the case of forest areas, the work effort takes several months, even one year. We can have kits installed in the reproduction area without taking any information during one year, what proves the scarce mobility of the she-bears and babies and at the same time, that the area chosen to reproduce has the conditions of an optimum habitat that allows the bears to stay in that area in a permanent manner. Reasons that force us to think in that territory bears must have an special protection level compared to other species, for instance to include it as a critical area classification.

Sometimes, we can check the importance of learning, as it is the case of pictures where the mother embraced to a tree is imitated by cubs or the follow-up itself of the cubs during several years.

This filopatric nature of the she-bears is providential to do a continuous follow-up of the mother and the brood, since they were born, when the emancipate and are left to their fate. To see how cubs emancipated from their mother do not pretend to know nothing about her, but the follow her along the forest, though at a considerable distance. Where one day we photograph one mother, the following day the cubs appear.

BREEDING SEASON FOLLOW-UP

2º Breeding season follow-up

Are we able to know how many females with cubs will there be during the next reproduction period? At least, we can forecast, although when the breeding season arrives, the realty may not fit with what was expected. The static stations of photo traps reach to capture the most critic moments in the bear biology, the breeding season.

We mean by ‘breeding season’ the pressure status of the males over the females to force the copulation. Photo kits take these moments with large precision. The female photographed, defined with date (day, hour, minute), followed by another picture with only one minute gap (the minimum time space between one picture and the following to avoid quick discharges of the film) in which the male shows following the female, sometimes photographed clearly in heat.

It is clear that, if there is a heat, we have a female with reproductive capabilities and therefore, from next spring on, the possibility to detect her with the just born cubs becomes evident.

Besides the biologic datum, we get some more information to detect possible increases in the stable occupancy of areas by bears, reaching even to confirm that, at least, the West Core population of the Cantabric Range and more exactly in Asturias, bear is becoming strong in more areas and even increasing the demographic level.

Experience for new works

The use of photo kits may have a larger utility in bears’ conservation, specially to assess situations these animals go through along the biologic cycles and to check results of initiatives whose target is to favour their conservation.

Carrion follow-up

During year 2004, worried by the presence of cubs extremely undernourished detected by the photo kits and evaluating the possible influence of the application of the European regulation of control of carrion in order to favour eradication of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, we proceeded to the photo control of some domestic cattle carcasses, allocated in the bear territory in a random manner, is such a way it matched the natural process of carrion elimination that has happened in the territory along the centuries.

Pictures allowed us to check the use of carrion by bear population and to determine that cubs that succeeded to get to carrion, had normal physical status, quite the opposite to those that did not.

Then, it is valuable the negative influence that over the bear population this regulation may have and the need to explain to the EU the singularity of these Cantabric Range areas where carrion coming from domestic livestock seems to cover an important part of the feeding resources of these animals.

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