Walking The Bears.pdf

5.1 Collared bears
CHAPTER 5
Hard lessons, soft success: Release and
monitoring of Asiatic black bears in Pakke
Monitoringreleasedbears is essential to know the
success of any rehab exercise. Radio-telemetry
studies are expensive but it has to be done at
leasttilltherehabilitationtechniqueisperfectedandthe
protocolisprovedtobefoolproof.Radio-trackingbesides
providing information on the status of released bears,
also provides valuable data on their dispersal and
rangingpatterns. Thequestionishowlongthereleased
bears should be monitored to consider it a success.
Therearethreeoptions:
1. Looking at short term survival of bears (six
months to one year from release)
2. Looking at long term survival (for 2-3 years
after release)
3. Monitor to know whether released bears
have contributed to the wild population
As rehabilitators consider radio-collaring a drain on
their resources, tracking the bears for more than a
year is considered a luxury. In a rehabilitation
program handling five to ten bears every year, it may
not be feasible to monitor all bears for their
reproductive contribution to the resident population
of bears. Moreover, any human intervention at a later
stage for re-collaring would hamper the rehabilitation
success of the released bears. Since the objective at
CBRC was to look at the short-term survival of the
bears after release, collars that would drop-off within
eight months of collaring were preferred.
All the five bears were radio-collared during different
periods of their rehabilitation with VHF collars
(Telonics, USA) (Fig 5.1). Considering the dense
canopy in the semi evergreen forests, VHF telemetry
systems were preferred over GPS systems. Taking into
account the growing age of the bear cubs, all the
collars were programmed to drop-off after eight
months of release. The transmitters had the mortality
sensors as well. These sensors would beep out signals
of different pulse in case of any prolonged inactivity of
the bear. The idea was to monitor the bears for a
minimum period of six months.
The first three bears hard-released were radiocollared
on the day of their relocation and release. They
were two to three years of age that time. The last two
bearssoft-releasedwerecollaredwhentheywereabout10
months of age, coinciding with the time when they were
allowedtospendthenightsoutsidetheenclosure.Allthe
bears were administered a combination of Ketamine and
Xylazine hydrochlorides by an air-pressurized remote
delivery system for restraining them for collaring. The
standard reversal agent Yohimbine hydrochloride was
used to reverse the effects of Xylazineafter the following
proceduresweredulycompleted:
Fig 5.1 One of the bears being radio-collared
prior to its release in Pakke WLS.
DargeTsering/WTI