Post by grrraaahhh on Sept 20, 2011 16:11:16 GMT -9
In comparison to their US cousins, these black bears are smaller in size but difficult living conditions make the black bears of Labrador some of the most predatory.
Black Bear: Torngat Mountains National Park
of Canada.
From the 'General' Ursus Americanus thread:
Labrador's Barren-Ground Black Bears
by Carla Helfferich
In nature, everything is looking for a way--and a place--to make a living. Leave a field unplowed, and it becomes a meadow; leave the meadow untended, and forest returns. Kill off timber wolves, and coyotes move in.
Another example of this pattern has been uncovered by a researcher working in the Ungava region of Labrador. Alasdair Veitch, a Ph.D. student of zoology at the University of Alberta, presented an informal report on the matter in "Information North," a newsletter from the Arctic Institute of North America.
Veitch's study area is wild and remote, even by Alaska standards. He worked close to the east coast, near 59 degrees north latitude. His base camp was the old Moravian mission known as Hebron, abandoned in 1959. The nearest permanent settlement is now Nain, 200 kilometers south along the coast.
The tree line lies a few inlets to the south along the coast, but below Nain inland. North Ungava is tundra country. Veitch's original aim was to study caribou, but he found himself distracted by black bears.
Savvy northerners may puzzle over that statement. Tundra bears in North America are almost invariably grizzlies. Sometimes a polar bear wanders down from the ice, or a blackie sticks his snout above treeline on a temporary sortie after caribou, but animals living year around on tundra or "barrens" are known to be grizzly bears.
So they once were in Labrador. The Ungava barren-ground grizzlies were identified by a Hudson's Bay factor as early as the 1840s, and the Native people living there discriminated between the fierce brown bears of the open country and the more timid black bears of the forest. Probably grizzlies were never numerous, for early naturalists passed along Native accounts rather than tales of their own encounters with the big bears. By the 1920s, the barren-ground grizzles were gone everywhere east of Hudson Bay. Veitch suspects they were probably victims of overhunting and of the loss of their most important food, caribou. The early twentieth century saw a precipitous decline in caribou herds in the vicinity.
With their big brown cousins gone, black bears moved permanently out onto the now-safe Labrador tundra. The descendants of these pioneering bruins became Veitch's study subjects. He followed them and watched them, from the time they emerged from winter dens throughout the summers of 1989 through 1991. He caught, weighed, collared and released 22 of them. And he learned that these black bears are behaving like brown bears.
When they first awaken in the spring, the bears go after meat. They eat ringed seals, either catching seals frozen out of their escape holes in the ice or scavenging dead ones killed by shifting ice. They hunt caribou and they excavate burrowing rodents, digging up voles or lemmings much as Alaska grizzlies go after ground squirrels.
Even when green sprouts and season-ending berries permit the barren-ground black bears to concentrate on plant foods, Veitch and his colleagues found the bears would never pass up na chance to hunt down meat or scavenge carcasses. Life on the tundra is harder than in the forest, and the bears needed to become better predators.
They also needed to cover more territory. South of tree line, an adult black bear usually has a home range of less than 100 square kilometers. All of Veitch's radio-collared bears had ranges several times that, and two claimed territories of more than 1000 square kilometers. He speculates that the bears need bigger territories because the food supply is more patchy, with wide expanses holding little good to eat, and because good denning sites are sparse in tundra country.
The black bears may roam and hunt like grizzlies, but they aren't growing to grizzly size. Perhaps because life on the Labrador tundra is hard, or maybe because undersized bears got shoved out of forested country, the barren-ground blackies are on the small side. Still, any black bear is worth respect--especially when it's a highly carnivorous one.
www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF10/1069.html
Reply # 2: shaggygod.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=americanus&action=display&thread=81&page=1
From wikipedia:
Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle. It is the largest and northernmost geographical region in Atlantic Canada.
Labrador occupies the eastern part of the Labrador Peninsula, in an area slightly larger than the US state of Colorado. It is bordered to the west and the south by the Canadian province of Quebec. Labrador also shares a small land border with the Canadian territory of Nunavut on Killiniq Island.
Though Labrador's area is over twice that of the island of Newfoundland, it has only 6% of the province's population. The aboriginal peoples of Labrador include the Northern Inuit of Nunatsiavut, the Southern Inuit-métis of Nunatukavut (NunatuKavut), and the Innu. The non-aboriginal population in Labrador did not permanently settle in Labrador until the natural resource developments of the 1940s and 1950s. Before the 1950s, very few non-aboriginal people lived in Labrador year round. The few European immigrants who worked seasonally for foreign merchants and brought their families were known as Settlers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labrador
Black Bear: Torngat Mountains
National Park of Canada.
From Black Bear, Ursus americanus, Ecology on the Northeast Coast of Labrador by Keith Chaulk, Soren Bondrup-Nielsen, Fred Harrington.
Abstract
Twenty-three Black Bears (Ursus americanus) were captured, 20 were measured, marked and/or radio collared, in northeastern Labrador, between 1996 and 1997. Bears used sea ice for travel, coastal islands for denning, hunted adult Caribou (Rangifer tarandus), and were the possible cause of Moose (Alces alces) calf mortality. Body sizes were small, median weight of adult females was 48 kg, and the sex ratio for captured subjects was 1:1. Four of six radio-collared females gave birth during the winter of 1997, female reproductive histories suggest delayed sexual maturity. Den entry occurred between October and December 1996; spring emergence occurred between April and May 1997, with estimated denning period ranging from 148-222 days. Visual observations of habitat use by radio collared subjects (n = 10) were not tested statistically but suggest that barren areas are used nearly as much as forest. Location data from three GPS collars deployed on three adult females were analysed using Chi-square goodness-of-fit test with Bonferroni correction; two females appeared to prefer forest habitats (p < 0.05).
PDF LINK: www.canadianfieldnaturalist.ca/index.php/cfn/article/view/101/101
Black Bear: Torngat Mountains National Park
of Canada.
From the 'General' Ursus Americanus thread:
by Carla Helfferich
In nature, everything is looking for a way--and a place--to make a living. Leave a field unplowed, and it becomes a meadow; leave the meadow untended, and forest returns. Kill off timber wolves, and coyotes move in.
Another example of this pattern has been uncovered by a researcher working in the Ungava region of Labrador. Alasdair Veitch, a Ph.D. student of zoology at the University of Alberta, presented an informal report on the matter in "Information North," a newsletter from the Arctic Institute of North America.
Veitch's study area is wild and remote, even by Alaska standards. He worked close to the east coast, near 59 degrees north latitude. His base camp was the old Moravian mission known as Hebron, abandoned in 1959. The nearest permanent settlement is now Nain, 200 kilometers south along the coast.
The tree line lies a few inlets to the south along the coast, but below Nain inland. North Ungava is tundra country. Veitch's original aim was to study caribou, but he found himself distracted by black bears.
Savvy northerners may puzzle over that statement. Tundra bears in North America are almost invariably grizzlies. Sometimes a polar bear wanders down from the ice, or a blackie sticks his snout above treeline on a temporary sortie after caribou, but animals living year around on tundra or "barrens" are known to be grizzly bears.
So they once were in Labrador. The Ungava barren-ground grizzlies were identified by a Hudson's Bay factor as early as the 1840s, and the Native people living there discriminated between the fierce brown bears of the open country and the more timid black bears of the forest. Probably grizzlies were never numerous, for early naturalists passed along Native accounts rather than tales of their own encounters with the big bears. By the 1920s, the barren-ground grizzles were gone everywhere east of Hudson Bay. Veitch suspects they were probably victims of overhunting and of the loss of their most important food, caribou. The early twentieth century saw a precipitous decline in caribou herds in the vicinity.
With their big brown cousins gone, black bears moved permanently out onto the now-safe Labrador tundra. The descendants of these pioneering bruins became Veitch's study subjects. He followed them and watched them, from the time they emerged from winter dens throughout the summers of 1989 through 1991. He caught, weighed, collared and released 22 of them. And he learned that these black bears are behaving like brown bears.
When they first awaken in the spring, the bears go after meat. They eat ringed seals, either catching seals frozen out of their escape holes in the ice or scavenging dead ones killed by shifting ice. They hunt caribou and they excavate burrowing rodents, digging up voles or lemmings much as Alaska grizzlies go after ground squirrels.
Even when green sprouts and season-ending berries permit the barren-ground black bears to concentrate on plant foods, Veitch and his colleagues found the bears would never pass up na chance to hunt down meat or scavenge carcasses. Life on the tundra is harder than in the forest, and the bears needed to become better predators.
They also needed to cover more territory. South of tree line, an adult black bear usually has a home range of less than 100 square kilometers. All of Veitch's radio-collared bears had ranges several times that, and two claimed territories of more than 1000 square kilometers. He speculates that the bears need bigger territories because the food supply is more patchy, with wide expanses holding little good to eat, and because good denning sites are sparse in tundra country.
The black bears may roam and hunt like grizzlies, but they aren't growing to grizzly size. Perhaps because life on the Labrador tundra is hard, or maybe because undersized bears got shoved out of forested country, the barren-ground blackies are on the small side. Still, any black bear is worth respect--especially when it's a highly carnivorous one.
www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF10/1069.html
Reply # 2: shaggygod.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=americanus&action=display&thread=81&page=1
From wikipedia:
Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle. It is the largest and northernmost geographical region in Atlantic Canada.
Labrador occupies the eastern part of the Labrador Peninsula, in an area slightly larger than the US state of Colorado. It is bordered to the west and the south by the Canadian province of Quebec. Labrador also shares a small land border with the Canadian territory of Nunavut on Killiniq Island.
Though Labrador's area is over twice that of the island of Newfoundland, it has only 6% of the province's population. The aboriginal peoples of Labrador include the Northern Inuit of Nunatsiavut, the Southern Inuit-métis of Nunatukavut (NunatuKavut), and the Innu. The non-aboriginal population in Labrador did not permanently settle in Labrador until the natural resource developments of the 1940s and 1950s. Before the 1950s, very few non-aboriginal people lived in Labrador year round. The few European immigrants who worked seasonally for foreign merchants and brought their families were known as Settlers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labrador
Black Bear: Torngat Mountains
National Park of Canada.
From Black Bear, Ursus americanus, Ecology on the Northeast Coast of Labrador by Keith Chaulk, Soren Bondrup-Nielsen, Fred Harrington.
Abstract
Twenty-three Black Bears (Ursus americanus) were captured, 20 were measured, marked and/or radio collared, in northeastern Labrador, between 1996 and 1997. Bears used sea ice for travel, coastal islands for denning, hunted adult Caribou (Rangifer tarandus), and were the possible cause of Moose (Alces alces) calf mortality. Body sizes were small, median weight of adult females was 48 kg, and the sex ratio for captured subjects was 1:1. Four of six radio-collared females gave birth during the winter of 1997, female reproductive histories suggest delayed sexual maturity. Den entry occurred between October and December 1996; spring emergence occurred between April and May 1997, with estimated denning period ranging from 148-222 days. Visual observations of habitat use by radio collared subjects (n = 10) were not tested statistically but suggest that barren areas are used nearly as much as forest. Location data from three GPS collars deployed on three adult females were analysed using Chi-square goodness-of-fit test with Bonferroni correction; two females appeared to prefer forest habitats (p < 0.05).
PDF LINK: www.canadianfieldnaturalist.ca/index.php/cfn/article/view/101/101
