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The age of extinction

Karelian bear dogs are being utilized to frighten wild bears from human settlements and lower human-wildlife dispute

Isabelle Groc

Tue 23 May 2023 08.00 BST

The dog is moving through the turfs of the open meadow, carefully followed by bear biologist Carrie Hunt, who is observing his responses as he sees the grizzly bear carcass for the very first time. “Find it,” says Hunt, motivating the two-month-old puppy. The puppy’s ears and tail are up as he approaches the bear meticulously, however with the self-confidence that Hunt is searching for in a bear dispute dog.

This is a Karelian bear dog, a sturdy breed from Finland understood to be courageous and efficient in withstanding big mammals such as brown bears and moose. People as soon as utilized the dogs to hunt huge video game in areas that now become part of Russia and Finland. Today, in Montana, Hunt is utilizing the dogs to keep bears alive.

Carrie Hunt, creator of the Wind River Bear Institute in Montana, with 2 bear dispute dogs. Photograph: Isabelle Groc

Hunt established the Wind River Bear Institute in 1996, where she trains Karelian bear dogs to frighten bears that get too near to human settlements which would otherwise be killed. “I wanted to make things safer for bears and people,” she says.

Karelian puppies go through a series of tests in which fitness instructors teach them the best behaviours and assess their character and how they respond in scenarios that include packed bears and cougars put in the field. Just 20% of a litter will make it as bear dispute dogs, where an incorrect relocation or tiniest doubt can result in severe injury. “We are looking to figure out which ones have the right stuff. It is important for the safety of the people we are placing the dogs with,” says Nils Pedersen, director of the institute. “What we want to see is a dog that has an intrinsic motivation to hunt and find anything new and scary.”

Hunt throughout a training session with a Karelian bear dog puppy and bear carcass. Photograph: Isabelle Groc

When they are all set, the dogs are released throughout North America – for instance, dealing with the Alaska fire service to keep firemens safe on callouts and at the exact same time lower the variety of bears that are killed each year.

Between 2020 and 2022, dog handler Greg Colligan dealt with one puppy on its very first project assisting to fix disputes in between individuals and grizzly bears in Alaska’s Denali national forest and protect. “He was integrated into almost every facet of what we do as a wildlife management crew,” says Colligan, previous lead wildlife specialist for the park. “He helped us detect bears and push them out of an area if we needed to. He was key to everything we did.”

Karelian bear dogs are significantly being utilized by wildlife and land supervisors not simply in the United States, however in Canada and even Japan to motivate social distancing in between people and wildlife.

In North America, bears reside in landscapes where the human footprint is expanding. As an outcome, individuals and predators are required to share space, setting the phase for increased human-wildlife disputes. Bears might be lured to check out human-dominated locations with simple to gain access to food sources such as rubbish bins, chicken cages, bird feeders or fruit trees, particularly in the summertime and fall, when they require to store energy for hibernation. With warmer temperature levels arising from the environment crisis and more human foods easily available, bears may even delay hibernation.

A grizzly bear. They are significantly entering into dispute with people. Photograph: Isabelle Groc

In Nevada, a boost in the black bear population is hitting a development in city advancement. Game biologist Heather Reich reports that in between 1987 and 1991, the Nevada Department of Wildlife received approximately 14 calls reporting disputes with bears a year. Between 2007 and 2011, that number grew to more than 500, and in 2022, 1,450 calls were received. Reich associates the latest rise to a late spring frost that killed the bears’ natural deposits such as berries. “This drove bears down into urban areas searching desperately for food,” Reich says.

Clayton Lamb of the University of British Columbia studied demographic data for more than 2,500 brown bears in British Columbia over 40 years and discovered that in human-dominated landscapes, for each bear that lived to 14 years, 29 did not. By contrast, just 4 passed away throughout the exact same duration in a wilderness location without any individuals to compete with. The animals that had the ability to endure in human-dominated locations had actually embraced a nighttime way of life to prevent individuals. “If a bear can learn to live near people, they can survive, but very few bears make it to adulthood and figure out how to live in that landscape,” Lamb says.

In Nevada, wildlife supervisors initially attempted to frighten human-habituated black bears away with sound makers and rubber bullets, however that did not constantly work. “The bears very quickly learned that was not that scary and that nothing bad happened,” Reich says.

Puppies are checked with a variety of workouts, consisting of direct exposure to packed predators. Photograph: Isabelle Groc

In 2001, the wildlife department began using Karelian bear dogs. Now, when an issue bear endeavors too close, Reich and her coworkers capture the animal. Then, when the bear is launched, the dogs chase it away in a short pursuit. “For the bear, it is a really bad experience,” Reich says. Bears are naturally careful of canids as coyotes and wolves can eliminate their cubs. “The dogs have a body language, an animal-to-animal conversation that speaks much stronger to the bear than I can,” Reich says.

The lesson taught by the dogs is one that the bears appear to keep in mind. A study of black bears in the Tahoe Basin led by Mario Klip, ecological researcher at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, discovered that bears that had encounters with Karelian bear dogs ended up being more nighttime, were less active in winter season, and invested less time in city locations.

“The dogs make me a better biologist because they allow me to keep bears in the landscape as long as I possibly can, rather than having to kill and remove them,” Reich says.

With their eager sense of odor, bear dogs can likewise find the existence of a bear early, permitting wildlife supervisors to take preventive steps while remaining safe. “They allow me to do things with bears that I couldn’t do as a single human,” Reich says. “We have bears that den under homes. It feels a lot better crawling under these buildings with the dogs to help flush that bear out than me alone.”

Ultimately, while the dogs can assist in saving a bear’s life, people should likewise do their part by protecting trash in bear-resistant containers or setting up electrical fences.

The dogs’ sense of odor suggests they can find bears prior to people know they neighbor. Photograph: Isabelle Groc

At the Wind River Bear Institute, Hunt puts a focus on “bear shepherding”. “It is about teaching bears and people the correct behaviours so they can live in the same area,” she says, however that will just work if individuals eliminate the lure of trash and other temptations.

As Karelian bear dogs are normally people-friendly, they can help inform individuals about the requirement to adopt behaviours that will lower dispute. “People want to talk to you when you show up with the dogs,” Colligan says. “The dogs are a way for us to connect with bears in a human-bear conflict situation, but they also allow us as humans to connect to each other.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity press reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and functions

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