@Shakyamuni 976249 wrote:
Are they keeping track of them as a safety percaution because as populated as mainland Europe is people probably can run up on a bear quite easily, no? No one in a million years would think about tagging bears with collars for this purpose in the western USA or especially not Alaska!
It is done to check where they are going and to keep the bears safe – mostly from fast motor traffic (which is equally likely to be unpleasant for the driver and passengers.
Bears, if given enough room and food are not especially dangerous to humans even if they are large and scary; and very few people are attacked by them. There was a stage where the Japanese were for some reason regularly being attacked by the Asian Black Bear but the remaining ones are now finally working out how to live in peace with it.
and in Malaysia within the space of a decade the small but “fierce” Sun Bear had become tame enough for middle aged couples to be keeping them as pets – although against CITES wildlife protection laws and it causes problems when the couple reach their senior age; seniors homes can cope with a few cats or dogs but not bears. Many such animals have been sent to UK zoos as the Asian zoos are full up with them already,..
Bear monitoring does also (understandably) seem to be popular in Northern European countries where they invented the GSM mobiles and there are more female Professors (bears have a matriarchal society). An old Germanic given name for girls was/is Ursula (which means a she-bear). I think Canada does do it as well – they also count the geese every so often.
There are good reasons for doing this as its also an opportunity to check for any nasty chemical contamination in the woods and rural areas.
Norway’s Environment ministry has a target to release 13 x breeding pairs of bears into their woods every year. Of course bears do not care for border controls; so they get into many nearby nations. Some newer EU nations like RO are full of bears anyway, a chap at work once told me* “in my village, they cut all the tree….and now we have bear in the street, it raid our trash containers.”
