130925-studie-wildlife-comeback-in-europe

Figure 1a.
Distribution of Brown
bear in 1700 [8] , 1955 [16]
and 2008 [8, 10, 17] .
Figure 1b.
Map highlighting
areas of range
expansion,
persistence and
contraction of the
Brown bear in Europe
between 1955 and
2008.
Drivers of recovery
Within our dataset, we identified a number of
reasons for the increases in population size
observed in European populations of Brown bear.
At a habitat scale, bears associated with boreal
forest and taiga, coniferous forest and Mediterranean
forest biomes have, in general, increased
in abundance. An opposite trend is apparent in
broadleaf and mixed forest populations, despite
the fact that nearly 66% of these have received
some form of conservation management (e.g.
direct protection, habitat conservation, public
education, hunting restrictions and management
of prey species). Geographically, this would suggest
that populations in the southern Balkans, the
Carpathians, the Alps and in northern Europe
are faring best, while declines are localised in
European Russia. This may be associated with
hunting pressures, although this is not listed as one
143