Renate Wesselingh, Santiago Espinosa, Fabricio Narváez, Sebastian Kohn, Rebecca Zug, Andrés Laguna, Sebastián Travez

The Ecuadorian Andes are a highly biodiverse yet increasingly human-impacted region where human-wildlife conflicts are frequent. In the northern Andes, a complex mosaic of agricultural lands, rural settlements, and fragmented forests continues to be traversed by Andean bears. Despite being classified as Endangered in Ecuador, the Andean bear remains insufficiently studied across much of its northern distribution, limiting effective landscape-scale conservation planning. We estimated the home ranges of 12 Andean bears in central and north of Ecuador using more than 28,000 GPS telemetry fixes. The monitored individuals included one rescued and rehabilitated bear, two non-conflict bears, and nine bears involved in human–wildlife conflict, three of which were translocated. We calculated home-ranges using three estimators: MCP, LoCoH, and aKDE, to evaluate methodological differences and their implications for conservation interpretation. As expected, MCP produced the largest area estimates, LoCoH generated more spatially constrained ranges reflecting landscape boundaries, and aKDE provided intermediate estimates that accounted for temporal autocorrelation in movement data. Substantial inter-individual variation was detected, with range size influenced by sex, age, and conflict status. We then quantified spatial overlap between home ranges and public national protected areas, as well as private and community-managed conservation territories. Although protected areas encompassed significant portions of bear space use, a considerable fraction of movements occurred outside formally protected boundaries, highlighting the complementary role of public and private conservation initiatives. Our findings underscore that methodological choices influence conservation interpretations and demonstrate that sustaining Andean bear populations requires integrated management across protected and multi-use landscapes.