Sven Brunberg

• Norwegian University of Life Sciences

Intraperitoneal radio transmitters have been widely used in free-ranging wild mammals, but there are no long-term studies on their biocompatibility or technical stability within the abdominal cavity of animals. Possible negative health effects may bias results from ecological studies on instrumented animals and raise concerns over animal welfare is...

Human persecution and habitat loss have endangered large carnivore populations worldwide, but some are recovering, exacerbating old conflicts. Carnivores can injure and kill people; the most dramatic form of wildlife-human conflict. In Scandinavia, the brown bear (Ursus arctos) population increased from ~500 bears in 1977 to ~3300 in 2008, with an...

Summary from the course “Säkrare björnjakt”. (DOCX)

Zoos and wildlife parks play an important role in conservation and education of the general public about wildlife. Educational materials and guided tours are commonly offered in wildlife parks. We carried out a questionnaire amongst visitors of a wildlife park in Sweden about their knowledge, perceptions, and the learning outcome of a wildlife park...

Muscle atrophy is one of the main characteristics of human ageing and physical inactivity, with resulting adverse health outcomes. To date, there are still no efficient therapeutic strategies for its prevention and/or treatment. However, during hibernation, bears exhibit a unique ability for preserving muscle in conditions where muscle atrophy woul...

Selecting the right habitat in a risky landscape is crucial for an individual's survival and reproduction. In predator – prey systems, prey often can anticipate the habitat use of their main predator and may use protective associates (i.e. typically an apex predator) as shields against predation. Although never tested, such mechanisms should also e...

Humans are important agents of wildlife mortality, and understanding such mortality is paramount for effective population management and conservation. However, the spatial mechanisms behind wildlife mortality are often assumed rather than tested, which can result in unsubstantiated caveats in ecological research (e.g. fear ecology assumptions) and...

Electronic Supplementary Material 2: Spatial landscape data - motivation and predictions

Understanding a species' feeding ecology is essential for successful management and conservation, because food abundance can influence body mass, survival, reproductive success, movements, and habitat use. We describe annual and seasonal variations in the diet of brown bears Ursus arctos in southcentral Sweden, based on analysis of 527 fecal sample...

Knowledge of factors influencing the timing of reproduction is important for animal conservation and management. Brown bears (Ursus arctos) are able to vary the birth date of their cubs in response to their fat stores, but little information is available about the timing of implantation and parturition in free-ranging brown bears. Body temperature...

Behavioural strategies to reduce predation risk can incur costs, which are often referred to as risk effects. A common strategy to avoid predation is spatio-temporal avoidance of predators, in which prey typically trade optimal resources for safety. Analogous with predator–prey theory, risk effects should also arise in species with sexually selecte...

We conducted thirteen immobilizations of previously collared hibernating two- to four-year-old brown bears (Ursus arctos) weighing 21-66 kg in central Sweden in winter 2010 and 2011 for comparative physiology research. Here we report, for the first time, an effective protocol for the capture and anesthesia of free-ranging brown bears during hiberna...

Original, Intermediate and permanent den sites for each of the captured bears. (XLSX)

We compared anesthetic protocols with different doses of tiletamine–zolazepam (TZ) combined with medetomidine (M) for 288 yearling brown bear (Ursus arctos L., 1758) immobilizations with the objective of finding a combination of doses that would provide fast induction with a duration of anesthesia long enough to minimize the need for administering...

Livestock depredation is an important factor that contributes to low public acceptance of large carnivores, and it is often used as an incentive to reduce large carnivore populations. In central Sweden, brown bears Ursus arctos coexist with a traditional cattle husbandry system that allows daytime free-ranging of dairy cattle. Despite a growing bro...

In the den, hibernating brown bears do not develop tissue atrophy or organ damage, despite almost no physical activity. Mesenchymal stem cells could play an important role in tissue repair and regeneration in brown bears. Our objective was to determine if adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ASCs) can be recovered from wild Scandinavian brown bears a...

Physiologie variables during anesthesia with medetomidine-zolazepam-tiletamine were evaluated in 52 free-ranging brown bears (Ursus arctos) darted from a helicopter and in six captive brown bears darted at a zoo. During anesthesia, rectal temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, and pulse oximetry derived hemoglobin oxygen saturation were recorde...

Physiologic variables during anesthesia with medetomidine-zolazepam-tiletamine were evaluated in 52 free-ranging brown bears (Ursus arctos) darted from a helicopter and in six captive brown bears darted at a zoo. During anesthesia, rectal temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, and pulse oximetry derived hemoglobin oxygen saturation were recorde...

ABSTRACT  Out of precaution, opportunism, and a general tendency towards thoroughness, researchers studying wildlife often collect multiple, sometimes highly correlated measurements or samples. Although such redundancy has its benefits in terms of quality control, increased resolution, and unforeseen future utility, it also comes at a cost if anima...

Information on hemostasis and platelet function in brown bear (Ursus arctos) is of importance for understanding the physiological, protective changes during hibernation. The study objective was to document platelet activity values in brown bears shortly after leaving the den and compare them to platelet function in healthy humans. Blood was drawn f...

Table S2. Platelet aggregometry in Scandinavian brown bears and humans.

Table S1. Hematological parameters. Scandinavian brown bears vs. humans.

This study assessed whether arterial oxygenation could be increased by treatment with intranasal oxygen supplementation in brown bears (Ursus arctos) with hypoxemia during anesthesia with medetomidine-zolazepam-tiletamine. Arterial blood samples were collected anaerobically from the femoral artery before and during oxygen supplementation. An oxygen...

We propose a new cover cylinder as a useful tool for a single observer to measure horizontal cover in the field. We compared it with 4 other methods for measuring horizontal cover at brown bear (Ursus arctos) beds, with all measurements taken 10 m from beds in the 4 cardinal directions. We also compared cylinder cover values from a fixed distance w...

Measuring activity levels in animals provides important information about their behavioral ecology and may be a relevant factor in management and conservation. We tested an individual-based method to discriminate active and passive behaviors on brown bears (Ursus arctos), using a dual-axis motion sensor mounted on Global Positioning System–Global S...

Chemical capture and anaesthesia of free-ranging mammals will always involve some risk of mortality even in healthy animals. Deaths may be directly or indi-rectly attributable to the anaesthetic event itself (e.g. drug overdose, drowning during induction and dart trauma) or may be caused by secondary effects from the capture (e.g. stress, myopathy,...

Noninvasive genetic methods can be used to estimate animal abundances and offer several advantages over conventional methods. Few attempts have been made, however, to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the estimates. We compared four methods of estimating population size based on fecal sampling. Two methods used rarefaction indices and two were...

This report summarizes results of the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project obtained during 2000-04. The specific results relevant for the Large Carnivore and Society Project (RoSa) funded by the Research Council of Norway are the following. 1) We have documented the dispersal behavior of young male and female bears. We found, for the first time...

We documented the loss of brown bear (Ursus arctos) cubs-of-the-year (cubs) in 2 Swedish populations for 11 years in the north and 12 years in the south, and made spatial and temporal comparisons to examine whether nutritional, social (sexually selected infanticide), or den distur- bance factors best explained the observed variation. Annual cub los...

Winter den abandonment by brown bears Ursus arctos in south-central Sweden and southeastern Norway was found to occur in 9% of 194 bear-winters, based on 68 radio-marked bears almost two years old and older. There was no statistical difference between the sexes, between adults and subadults, nor did protection from military or timber-harvesting act...