A recent study revealed that grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies have adjusted their movements to navigate around human development like coal mines, highways, reservoirs, and towns. The research, based on two decades of GPS collar data from over 100 grizzly bears and published in Conservation Science and Practice, highlighted the significant impact of human activities on bear movement in an 85,000-square-kilometer area in southern British Columbia and Alberta.
Lead author Eric Palm, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Montana, emphasized the loss of connectivity for grizzly bears in the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains due to existing human infrastructure. He warned that the emergence of new coal mines, towns, or highways could further restrict the bears’ movement and access to food, potentially leading to population-level consequences in the future.
The lifted moratorium on coal mining in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in January raised concerns about the impending threat to bear habitats from increased human development. Palm highlighted the expansion of existing coal mines and proposed new mining projects in British Columbia and Alberta as potential obstacles to bear mobility and habitat connectivity.
Computer simulations conducted in the study projected a future where bear habitat patches would become more disconnected, limiting bear movement. Grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies tend to stay within the mountains but are constrained by human development in valley bottoms where food sources are abundant. When food is scarce, both male and female bears are compelled to venture closer to roads in search of sustenance, risking encounters with human infrastructure.
Wildlife ecologist Tal Avgar, from the University of British Columbia, stressed the importance of bears avoiding human presence for their safety and longevity. Human-related mortalities of grizzly bears in Alberta, with 235 deaths attributed to humans between 2013 and 2022, underscored the critical need to minimize human-bear conflicts to protect bear populations.
The study indicated that the isolation of bear populations due to human development could hinder gene flow and impact breeding outcomes. While acknowledging the threats posed by new infrastructure, researchers highlighted ongoing efforts to enhance habitat connectivity in the Rockies through wildlife crossings over or under roads to facilitate animal movement across human-dominated landscapes.
While wildlife crossings have proven effective in some cases, their scope is limited to roads, leaving certain areas inaccessible to bears. The importance of planning development at a landscape scale to preserve animal movement corridors was emphasized to ensure the long-term conservation of bear populations amid increasing human encroachment.