Maria's collar was programmed to drop off on 18th May which it duly did so she is now free again. The GPS position showed it to be in an area of fallen trees. It was obvious that Maria had rested up here for a number of days - maybe she was relishing her new found freedom. Around the flattened rest site was a large quantity of dung full of grass. On closer inspection there were two types of dung. Now bear dung is not something that can really be confused with much else, it is big, very big, and bluish/black at this time of year. However on one side of the rest site there were some small piles. At first we thought that these were fox droppings, but on closer inspection they proved to be the dung of a baby bear! This cub must be much bigger and stronger than the one that died as Maria was moving very quickly through the terrain when she left her little one - in fact we thought that due to the speed she was moving she could not possibly have still had cubs. It was good news that the drop-off technology worked and great news to see that she still had a cub. Although we will not be receiving data from her any more, both us here at Projekt Medved' (Project Bear) and the TANAP head ranger were quietly pleased that she can go off in peace now. She has done her bit for science and has provided us with some very good data.
Galina, caught in May, has stayed around the settlements. She lives in an area that was devastated by the storm of 2004. With the removal of the timber, much of the energy was removed from the ecosystem and also the natural barriers to deer browsing trees were taken away so the area is characterised by stunted trees and bushes interspersed by grassy patches. Although not looking too pretty this vegetation is great cover for bears and wild boar. The patches of grass are perfect for bears to graze on and pigs to dig up in peace. Galina has passed by several communities but there is no concrete evidence that she has entered any of them. In fact the relatively large village of Gerlachov is given a very wide berth on all sides. Maybe this is due to her capture and a fear that she has developed, or maybe this is support for the argument that most of these bears are not entering the area specifically to raid bins but that they live there and occasionally enter village environments. The fact that all bears look big and brown would mean that even if a different bears entered the same village it might appear that there was one particularly persistent 'problem' bear - this would be possible if there was a relatively healthy population of bears in this area. We know, from camera traps, that there are definitely 4 in the immediate vicinity as Galina had two adult cubs which were chased away by an amorous male.
We think that Viktor has also been getting amorous with a couple of forays outside his regular area away from the grass slopes that he has been feeding on. Last week he was accused of killing six sheep. We proved his innocence using the position data. Apart from that he is leading the life of a very settled bear.
We have had two cracking bear sightings. One of a pair of bears, male and female, from about 150 metres. We watched them for about 45 mins and slowly walked closer until they ambled off into the forest. We also saw a mother and two cubs from about 50 metres - these were watched for about an hour and were totally oblivious to our presence. On recent tour we did not have that much luck in terms of close sightings but we still saw a total of 6 bears in two days; we saw a mother with three cubs high up on the slopes, a large male a long distance away and a cheeky adolescent quickly crossing one of the avalanche slopes about 200 metres away.
We have also seen hares, wild boar, red and roe deer, beavers, sousliks, an adder and, of course, plenty of birds in the past few weeks
- busy times!
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