Digicam collar footage is unveiling the key lives of Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus), South America’s solely surviving ursid. A wild Andean bear in Peru was caught consuming soil or clay, courting females and even cannibalizing a useless bear cub.
“It’s so arduous to see an Andean bear,” says Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya, a wildlife biologist at Amazon Conservation, a nongovernmental group in Cusco, Peru. Scientists estimate there are fewer than 20,000 left within the wild. “And it’s even more durable to see what they’re doing.” Though the bears are deep brown or black with shiny spectacled faces and may weigh as much as 340 kilos, they’re tough to identify within the dense, steep forests of the Andes.
Zoos and sanctuaries supply some perception into the bears’ mannerisms however not a lot. It’s their habits within the wild that’s essential for informing conservation selections. The Andean bear is listed as susceptible on the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature purple listing, and the species is underneath menace from unlawful poaching, habitat loss, mining and local weather change (SN: 4/30/24). Now, collars outfitted with video cameras are providing up some clues into the bear’s pure habits, researchers report December 4 in Ecology and Evolution.
The undertaking “is fantastic, and it’s distinctive,” says Mauricio Vela-Vargas, a wildlife biologist on the Wildlife Conservation Society in Bogotá, Columbia, who wasn’t concerned within the analysis. “For the primary time, we now have data that affirms loads of hypotheses.”
Bears have lengthy been embedded in Andean folklore. In a Quechua village by Cusco, Pillco grew up listening to her grandmother’s tales about ukukus — half human, half bear demigods who climbed a Peruvian glacier to deliver water again to close by human communities. She at all times needed to find extra about the true bears, the true ukukus, residing close by.
Pillco now leads the initiative to connect digital camera collars to Andean bears throughout Peru’s Kosñipata Valley. Sitting again and looking out by way of movies could appear simple, however watching the footage is simply the tip of the iceberg. Earlier than they might comb by way of the footage, Pillco’s staff needed to discover bears, catch them and fasten the collars.
The duty wasn’t simple. The valley’s terrain is rugged and inhospitable to hikers, says Andrew Whitworth, an ecologist specializing in tropical biodiversity at Osa Conservation, a nonprofit in Costa Rica. He had by no means seen an Andean bear earlier than. Whitworth says he joined Pillco on the undertaking, intrigued by “the joy of doing one thing that’s actually troublesome and a bit bit insane.”
To catch the bears, Pillco requested a neighborhood mechanic to assist construct traps — big steel packing containers designed to seize Andean bears and ping the researcher’s telephones.
“Typically we had false alarms, however the first time was a full expertise,” Pillco says.
One night time, that they had despatched a area assistant on a prolonged hike by way of the rugged forest to bait a lure close to the place they suspected a bear was wandering. On the assistant’s approach again, your complete analysis staff’s telephones began pinging ‘TRAP ALERT’. Pillco was satisfied the assistant had finished one thing mistaken. She grilled him: “Did you shut the door?” Did you set it correctly?” The assistant assured her that every little thing was finished proper. Nonetheless, she requested him to go and test.
“He went again, and the bear was there! … It was simply ready for the bait to be put in,” she says. Whitmore, who was nearly too sick to maneuver on the time, was so thrilled he obtained away from bed and was among the many first to reach on the scene.
Pillco and Whitmore initially tried out Crittercams, small GoPro–like cameras that hook onto separate collars, on two bears they have been capable of catch. They have been ultimately capable of hook up one other bear with a digital camera collar — a unique machine that integrates video, GPS location and motion velocity.
This bear wore the digital camera collar for 4 months. Then, the researchers needed to retrieve the machine.
“That was one of many hardest issues,” Whitmore says. The staff may launch the collar remotely. Nevertheless it didn’t fall off immediately. As soon as that they had a common location, the staff, which included locals who knew the terrain, backpacked out to retrieve it. They ventured by way of the thick cloud forests, crossed a river by constructing their very own bridge and walked for days till they reached the proper space. Everybody combed the bottom — together with Pillco’s search canine Ukuku. Nevertheless it was a neighborhood information who discovered it first.
The collar footage revealed Andean bear habits by no means recorded earlier than. The bear consumed beforehand undocumented meals like a kind of stinging nettle plant, a wooly monkey and a useless bear cub, and he spent seven days mating with a feminine bear (with breaks, in fact). And though Andean bears are regarded as fairly remoted creatures, this one bear encountered others, normally peacefully, many occasions.
The footage is essential not just for scientists but additionally the native communities, which personal a lot of the land the place Andean bears stay. As individuals in these communities attempt to preserve swaths of land, understanding what sort of berries and vegetation Andean bears prefer to nibble on helps land managers determine what species to develop. Pillco can also be presenting her movies at an upcoming bear competition and dealing with close by colleges to have interaction youngsters with the forests and bears that encompass them.
“We’re actually trying to construct conservation ambassadors with group individuals, as a result of I believe it’s key to empower them” to guard their land, Pillco says. “As a result of I can go, my group can go, however the communities are going to remain there.”
