Research...........?

[Sid Garige]

In an attempt to estimate polar bear population Fishing and wildlife surrounded whale bone pile with barbed wire. Idea is bears trying to access the bone pile has to go under the wire and their fur will get stuck in the wire. Gaming services will collect this fur samples periodically and extract DNA samples for population count.
Not sure how safe this will be in the dark when mothers with cubs trying to escape from big males.:2eyes2:

[Andrew Merwin]

Hi Sid, The same thing has been done with grizzly bears in the Rockies. I think the researchers have enough info & I always wonder what more they expect to learn. They have been doing this research for years. Some of the grizzlies have been darted & radio collared numerous times because the collars need (?) :2eyes2: to be replaced when the batteries die.

A lot of wildlife dies for the sake of research.

When a hunting season was opened for wolves, most of the "harvested" wolves were radio collared. That meant that more wolves had to be darted & radio collared so the "research" could continue.

I like the detail in the image & the fact that the bear is inside the "research area."

[Ken Watkins]

Sid,

Now this is what I call bizarre, is that sign really there?

[Sid Garige]

Sid,

Now this is what I call bizarre, is that sign really there?

Ken,

Yes the sign is there.
-Sid

[Rachel Hollander]

Sid - thanks for sharing this interesting photo. The sign really makes the image.

Rachel

[Marc Mol]

Nicely documented Sid, you'd think there has to be a better way of extracting DNA?
TFS

[Egil Droge]

I think cubs will just run under the wire, and the females too. Remember that most mammals perceive light (and darkness) a lot different than we do!
To be able to say something about the population one of the things you really need to know is is how animals die. If you study populations a lot of animals 'disappear', without you being able to tell anything about it. They could have died of natural causes (including a spreading disease!), non-natural causes, dispersed etc. A working(!) collar will give you a much better chance of finding the animal. Most collars will give a mortality signal if they haven't moved for a certain period (often 12 or 24 hours), notifying you there's something wrong (collar dropped or animal dead). Obviously you want to re-collar the animal as few times as possible, but sadly battery life is still not good enough to collar long living animals only once in their life.
If a good part of your studied animals are removed from the population you need to collar other animals to be able to study the population.
After the initial stages of the population, you know what things about the current state, if you want to manage (or preserve) the population in a good manner you need to monitor the population (to pick up diseases, increase in poaching, etc) so you can act upon changes within the population and be in the know as to why these changes are happening. Sadly, in most mammalian population this is still not possible without tagging the animals.
There are very very few truly untouched large areas with good wildlife populations, and in the current world, where wildlife seemingly everywhere is getting under pressure studying and monitoring wildlife is needed to preserve them!

If you think it's not all that serious think about the western black rhino, northern white rhino, mainland javan rhino, pyrenean ibex, baiji dolphink, spix' macaw, hawaiian crow...all taxa gone extinct in the wild since 2000.

[Egil Droge]

Looks like I kind of killed the discussion...