Winter insomnia: How weather conditions and supplementary feeding affect the brown bear activity in a long-term study

• Published in: Global Ecology and Conservation
• Main Authors: Katarzyna Bojarska, Szymon Drobniak, Zbigniew Jakubiec, Ewa Zyśk-Gorczyńska
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2019
• Subjects: Ecology; QH540-549.5; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00523; https://doaj.org/article/9870494b137e4093bb51123f6e837b4b

Climate change and anthropogenic food subsidies affect wildlife everywhere in the world. We used a 30-year set of data on winter observations of brown bear Ursus arctos to investigate the effects of weather and supplementary feeding on bear winter activity in the Polish Eastern Carpathians. The probability of observations of bears and their signs was negatively correlated with depth of snow cover and positively related to ambient temperature and the amount of supplementary food. We noted an increase in the frequency of bear winter observations over the study period, which might be additionally related to the increasing bear numbers in the study area. Our results provide new insights into the mechanisms of how climate change and supplementary feeding affect the brown bear, a species considered as threatened by human activity. Supplementary feeding seems to disrupt bears’ natural responses to winter weather conditions. Limiting the amount of anthropogenic food subsidies may help to mitigate the effect of climate change on wildlife. Keywords: Anthropogenic food subsidies, Climate change, Denning ecology, Ursus arctos, Winter activity, Winter severity