Estimating unrecorded human-caused mortalities of grizzly bears in the Flathead Valley, British Columbia, Canada.

ABSTRACT: Managing the number of grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) mortalities to a sustainable level is fundamental to bear conservation. All known grizzly bear deaths are recorded by management agencies but the number of human-caused grizzly bear deaths that are not recorded is generally unknown, causing considerable uncertainty in the total number of mortalities. Here, we compare the number of bears killed legally by hunters to the number killed by people for all other reasons, for bears wearing functioning radiocollars and for uncollared bears recorded in the British Columbia (BC) government mortality database for the Flathead Valley in southeast BC. Between 1980 and 2016, permitted hunters killed 10 collared bears and 12 (9 known, 3 suspected) were killed by people for other reasons. This rati

SUBMITTER: McLellan BN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6186403 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature