A brown bear population estimate for Finnmark County, North Norway
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Abstract
We have estimated the average number of brown bears Ursus arctos L. in Finnmark, the northernmost county in Norway. We started by estimating the number of bears where reproduction has been documented in the Pasvik Valley (1,330 km2) and published densities of brown bears from 1) female concentration areas in Sweden and northern Russia (ca. 5 bears per 1 000 km2), and 2) an intensively studied area in northern Sweden (12.6 bears per km2). We then expanded this estimate to all of Finnmark using observations of bears far from the Pasvik Valley. We estimate that there are on average 7 - 17 bears in Sør-Varanger Municipality, and totally 8 - 21 in Finnmark County. The brown bears in Finnmark comprise 31 - 38% of the total estimated number of bears in Norway of 26 - 55, respectively. An area of only 1,330 km2 in the Pasvik Valley is the major Norwegian brown bear area, contains about 30% of the bears in Norway, and is the area where reproduction is observed most regularly.
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