Träning och test med hund på brunbjörn (Ursus arctos) i hägn : långsiktiga effekter på beteenderepertoaren

• Main Author: Widegren, Ida
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: Swedish; English
• Published: SLU/Dept. of Animal Environment and Health 2020
• Subjects: ursus arctos; brunbjörn; hund; hundträning; beteende; stress; välfärd; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/15851/

The main cause of adult Brown bear (Ursus arctos) mortality in Sweden is due to legal hunting and there has been a game culture for this specie since 1943. Today there is two game enclosures for brown bears located in Sweden, one in Almunge and one in Junsele. The main reason for training dogs on bears in these enclosures is to ensure bear-safe dogs both for encounters when tracking bears that been wounded due to hunting or accidents, for bear hunting and in case of bear encounters when hunting other game species in bear-tight areas. Although the ideas would be favourable for either the safety of the hunters and their dogs or the welfare of potentially injured wild bears, the welfare of the animals used in these operations must be taken into consideration. In Chapter 3 1§ p.1 of the Swedish Animal Protection Act it states that it is forbidden to use animals in training or tests in such a way that they are subject to suffering. In 2019, a government assignment came to the Swedish National Board of Agriculture and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether training for pre-trial and predatory tests in game fences will cause suffering for the animals involved. This pointed out that there was a need for studies within the subject and this study is carried out in collaboration with SCAW without any connection to the mentioned government assignment. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects on the behaviour of fenced bears after being exposed to training/test with dogs. This was made to give an insight into the welfare of the bears from an ethological perspective. Results showed that the inactive behaviours had the highest proportion of observations throughout the study for all three bears. It also showed that one of the individuals performed stereotypic behaviour, pacing, before and after exposure but not during control observations. There was a connection between stereotypic behaviour and whether a training/test had been carried out. A pattern was seen between proportion of ...