The Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project (SBBRP), initiated in 1984, is one of the world’s longest-running research programs on brown bears (Ursus arctos). Over four decades, more than 940 individuals have been marked and monitored, generating a unique longitudinal dataset spanning individual life histories, population recovery, and significant changes to their management. Together with our collaborators, the SBBRP has published over 350 scientific peer-reviewed articles, contributed more than 150 management-related reports, and produced a wide array of content geared towards the general public. The project has educated multiple new generations of science professionals by mentoring numerous post-doctoral researchers, doctoral students, master's students, bachelor’s students, and volunteers from around the world.

In the start, research was primarily directed towards resolving fundamental uncertainties in brown bear biology and population ecology, including abundance and distribution, demography, reproduction, mortality, movement, habitat use, diet, and denning ecology. Individual-based monitoring provided an empirical foundation for understanding the recovery and subsequent management of the Scandinavian population.
The methodological advances have substantially increased the temporal, spatial, and biological resolution of this research. The transition from VHF telemetry to GPS tracking, accelerometry, physiological research, and DNA-based methods has enabled increasingly integrative investigations of behavioral ecology, population dynamics, genetic connectivity, anthropogenic disturbance, harvest effects, and hibernation physiology.
We aim to maintain these longitudinal datasets which provides an increasingly powerful framework for quantifying ecological responses to environmental and anthropogenic changes. Future research will integrate individual-, population-, and community-level processes through multispecies studies, investigate individual variation and adaptive capacity, and further develop genetic and demographic monitoring. The project will also continue exploring the physiological adaptations associated with hibernation as a translational model for human medicine and to advance our understanding of how wildlife research methodologies affect animal welfare and our results.

Presenter Email: [email protected]