Norwegian-Spanish cooperation to study human disturbance on brown bears. Applications for the conservation and management of bears in Europe

Understanding the effects of human activities on wildlife is challenging for large carnivores. During my PhD I studied effects of human activities on the behavior of brown bears, which showed fine-scale behavioral responses to human activities. Now I am l eading a project to compare bear behavior in protected and non-protected areas of Spain, where bears are in risk of extinction. For the last 10 years bears are not allowed to be radio-tracked in Spain, so it is not possible to obtain fine-scale informatio n on bear habitat use, i.e. limiting the scope of my research. In contrast, the Scandinavian bear population and the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project (SBBRP) offer excellent data to explore the effects of human activities on bear behavior and to h elp learn how to conserve large carnivore populations in human-dominated landscapes. There are ~3000 bears in Scandinavia and the SBBRP has radio-collared and tracked > 600 bears since 1984. My proposal includes research objectives in cooperation with th e SBBRP, which will provide knowledge applicable at the European scale, because many bear populations face similar conservation and management problems. Objectives (4 manuscripts publishable at scientific journals): 1- Hunting disturbance and behavioral c hanges in brown bears: Individual-based approach to study hunting disturbance on bear movements 2- Links between direct human disturbance and reproductive outcome in Scandinavian bears: To analyze the potential effect of human activities on the reproduct ive success of female bears 3- Effect of human disturbance on the occurrence of sexually selected infanticide: To search for potential links between human disturbance and the occurrence of infanticide 4- Comparison of stress levels in European bear popul ations; Scandinavia and Spain: Involving different study areas in terms of management, human and bear densities, and forest uses This proposal does not require additional funding for operating expenses