Research shows that Kodiak brown bears that sync their stream-to-stream movements to salmon spawning patterns eat longer and more than bears that don’t, with one bear in the study consuming greater than 2 tons of fish in one summer.
Individual sockeye salmon populations spawn for about 40 days, but “resource surfing” bears can fish for three times that long, biologists have learned.
Worldwide, prolonged salmon availability is increasingly under threat from hatchery supplementation that tends to reduce the genetic diversity underpinning different spawning times. In addition, bears’ ability to follow salmon waves is hampered by industrial development such as mining.
Findings were just published in Scientific Reports.
“This study is the first to link actual metrics of bear consumption to their foraging behavior and movements,” said co-author Jonathan Armstrong, assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife in the Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences.
Read more at Oregon State University
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