Wanderers

We can learn a lot about grizzly bears by watching their movements: their behaviour, their habitat, and even clues about their population health. In this Story Map, you'll find out how we study these magnificent animals and learn many things about the species, including meeting several individual bears that we've followed.

The  Grizzly Bear Program  began in 1998 and conducted research on many aspects of bear biology and ecology including learning about their habitat use and movement behaviour, estimating population size, identifying important food resources such as ungulates and berries, and determining potential impacts from industrial activities.

The Grizzly Bear Program works with the GIS Services team to answer important, practical questions, like:

• What habitats do grizzly bears use and how does this influence their health?
• Do grizzly bears move freely on the landscape or are their barriers to their movements?
• How many grizzly bears are there in Alberta?
• Are all grizzly bears predators?
• What impacts might industrial land use activities have on grizzly bear populations?

The first step is to sedate a grizzly bear so we can fit it with a GPS collar. One way we do this is with  culvert traps : big metal cylinders with a lure in the back. When a curious bear walks in and grabs the bait, it triggers the door to drop.

We are always trying to improve the process to make it as easy on the bear as possible, but some stress is unavoidable. So we try to make the most of the opportunity by collecting important information like weight, and samples like hair, as well as attaching a GPS collar.

Back in the office, the GIS and Grizzly Bear Programs use custom-built tools to help analyze the grizzly bear's movement to answer research questions.

 For example, Grizzly Bear Program biologists wanted to know which GPS points were during dawn, day, dusk, or night. So the GIS Analyst wrote a script to automatically look up the sunrise/sunset times for every date and location.

 Another important tool was an algorithm that looks for "clusters" of GPS points that show that a bear remained in one general area for a significant amount of time. When the bear finally leaves, the biologists visit the site to try to see why the bear decided to spend so much time there. For example, they might find the carcass of a kill, or a really great patch of berries.

A grizzly bear's home range is approximately 1,000–2,000 square kilometers for males and 200–500 square kilometers for females and includes all kinds of habitats from forest to wetland to mountains.

 By watching their movements and seeing where they spend their time, we can learn about what sort of habitat bears need. This helps land managers identify which areas to protect, and which disturbed areas could be restored.

The GPS collars send us their location every hour, but later in the fall, they generally send the same location a few times, and then stop sending us anything at all until the spring. The collars are still working, but the bear is underground hibernating in a den that it dug.

 Hibernation is an adaptive strategy to conserve energy during the time of year when food is scarce. It's also a safe place for female bears to give birth and nurse their newborn cubs.

 Later, our biologists visit these places to see what makes a good den site. People planning activities in grizzly bear habitat like work or recreation can avoid these kinds of places in the winter to avoid disturbing bears' hibernation at a sensitive time for the animal.

Learn about some of the grizzly bears that we followed in 2015.

Since 1998, the the Grizzly Bear Program has added immensely to our  understanding  of grizzly bears, helped to train the  next generation  of wildlife biologists, and  improved the methods  that scientists use to study many species and ecosystems.

In 2023, the  Grizzly Bear Monitoring Project  was created to build on the work of the past 25 years!

 Learn more!