Project History
​The Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project (SBBRP) is one of the world's longest running research projects on brown bears. It is important to understand, however, that our knowledge about the brown bear in Scandinavia has grown alongside both our project and the novel scientific and methodological developments over the last 40 years. For example, early on in the project in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, research efforts focused primarily on the fundamentals of bear biology. In other words, how many bears are there, where are they, and what are their general physical characteristics and behavior patterns (e.g., diet, denning, mating and reproduction, and home range behavior). On a world-wide scale, research on brown bears had really only just begun, starting with the Craighead brothers in North America in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. In general, we knew very little about brown bear biology, ecology, and behavior at this point in time and our understanding of the bear population in Scandinavia was minimal at best. Thus, this early information was crucial for understanding and conserving Scandinavia’s recovering brown bear population and resulted in a variety of management-related research papers and recommendations.
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The SBBRP was still relatively small at this stage but began to grow starting in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, incorporating additional field staff, students, and outside collaborators into the program. The growth in project personnel and output coincided with the growth of the Scandinavian bear population itself, which increased from 950-1200 in 1994 to about 3300 in 2008. In parallel with the growth of the project, our understanding of the Scandinavian brown bear population increased rapidly starting in the early 2000’s. For example, updated bear population estimates were made using a combination of new genetic methodologies and citizen science (hunters) data collection programs which helped track the rapid expansion and growth of the population. Early DNA analysis techniques began to shed light on the genetic structure of the population, and we began to monitor bear health and disease prevalence, a process that continues today. Our understanding of bear behavior also grew quickly, with research being conducted on bear habitat and space use, movement and dispersal, and mating systems and subsequent reproduction and mortality including sexually selected infanticide. We also continued to identify important bear foods and evaluate how access to them affected their behavior and fitness. This included exploring the role of brown bears as predators of ungulates such as moose and reindeer and setting those findings in context for managers.
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While the SBBRP continued to focus on monitoring the Scandinavian brown bear population and describing fundamental bear biology, other research topics began to evolve and increase starting in the 2010’s or so. For example, the SBBRP began to put the bear in the context of the human-dominated landscape in which it lives, and our understanding of how humans affect bears started to coalesce during this time period. We began to explore the effects of human infrastructure and disturbance on bear behaviors, such circadian rhythm, foraging patterns, movement, and their functional role as apex predators. This also included exploring the relationship between bear hunting and bear behavior, demonstrating that bear hunting has important effects on Scandinavia’s bears beyond just limiting their population size, e.g., hunting also effects their general behavior, life history traits, and interspecific interactions. DNA monitoring techniques continued to develop, which allowed us to explore more complex issues such as the potential and consequences of genetic bottlenecks in the population and gene flow and connectivity within the Scandinavian population itself and with other populations in Finland and Russia. These new genetic techniques also helped pave the way for the more sophisticated and accurate assessments of brown bear population size that we see today. Medical researchers also began to use the brown bear as a translational model in human medicine which helped shed light on brown bear physiology in general while advancing our understanding of human metabolic and cardiovascular disorders. This research, which remains ongoing, has the potential to transform both the prevention and treatment of a wide array of human diseases. Alongside advancing human medical research, the SBBRP began to explore the effects of capture and immobilization on bear physiology and behavior, leading the way in developing safe and ethical handling protocols for brown bears and other bear species.
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All of the research conducted throughout these different periods contributed to the conservation and management of the brown bear population in Scandinavia and continues to do so today. We are now in the early 2020’s and a new era of bear research is currently at our fingertips. While the project has conducted extensive research on brown bear biology over the last 40 years, only more recently have we begun to put bears into the context of the complex, multispecies ecosystem they live in. Indeed, shifting from single species to multispecies research is an important current trend across the world of biology. The SBBRP has already begun to move this way by exploring the nature of interactions between bears, wolves, and moose. We plan to continue to lead the way by establishing a long-term multispecies research area in Sweden in collaboration with other projects, such as the Scandinavian Wolf Research Project and the Moose Research Project at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
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We have also recently begun to explore individual variation in bear behavior. Understanding this is important because wide individual variation in behavior is what gives a species the flexibility needed to adapt to shifting environments, which is key in the context of global climate change. We also plan to continue to monitor the size and distribution of the brown bear population in Scandinavia and further explore fundamental bear biology, ecology, and their relationships with humans. For example, an ongoing study is currently looking at the effect of lead (Pb) exposure in bears, its effect on their long-term health, and the potential for downstream exposure in humans. We will also continue the important work of using bears as a translational model in human medical research, helping to transform the prevention and treatment of human diseases.
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Over the last 40 years, the SBBRP has made important scientific contributions to our understanding of a range of subjects including brown bear biology and ecology, animal welfare, and human health, all of which are covered in this report. The project has both contributed to the conservation and management of the Scandinavian brown bear population as well as to the world's overall understanding of brown bear biology and ecology. The project has also contributed a host of new methods to the world of science, ranging from new genetics and genotyping techniques to the development of safe and ethical capture and immobilization of large carnivores, as well as methods for analyzing diets, monitoring population size and trends, and archiving scientific data. Over time, we also developed ties with bear researchers in other nations, contributing to increased understanding of bear biology and subsequent management of brown bears in Pakistan, Spain, Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, North America, Mongolia, and regions of the Himalayas, as well as to spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus) in Ecuador, and sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) in Borneo.