What is the state doing to preserve the brown bear? Gobi brown bear: the problem of preserving the species

Currently, the number of brown bears is quite difficult to determine. The calculations, carried out using data on harvesting both over large areas and in individual regions, are unacceptable due to the obvious discrepancy between the hunted bears (including those under licenses) and a certain, close to reliable indicator of their number in the areas. It is enough to pay attention to a number of factors on which in our time not only the distribution of bears among stations depends, but also their availability for hunters.

In rural areas, the indigenous population who know the land well is becoming smaller due to widespread urbanization. The vast majority of sports hunters visit areas accessible to transport. For these reasons, bears are almost never caught in hard-to-reach places. The productivity of hunts, the most common in the European part of the USSR (hunting on oats), remains low, and from year to year it is heterogeneous and largely depends on the yield of the bear’s main food: in a good year, the percentage of prey drops sharply due to a decrease in the feeding intensity of bears in the fields sown with oats. Den hunting is currently underdeveloped due to the fact that bears lie in places that are difficult for humans to reach, and there are few experienced den hunters. The disturbance factor is now one of the ocular factors influencing the phasic distribution of bears.

Work on recording the number of bears in nature reserves has been done quite well. However, most protected areas serve as reserves for bears, and the density of the latter here does not reflect the actual indicators of the overall density for a particular region, and therefore cannot be taken as a cross-polational indicator.

We currently have information about total number brown bear only in certain areas, which are presented in special publications. Thus, in the Amur-Ussuri region there are 7-8 thousand brown bears, of which 2-2.5 are in Primorye, 9 in Kamchatka, and in the river basin. Kolyma (on an area of ​​199 km2) - 0.62-0.65, in Altai (on an area of ​​60 thousand km2) - 2-3, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory - 10-15, in the Vologda Region. - about 4, in the central regions of the European part of the RSFSR - 3.5-4 (generalized data from Prikloya), in the North-West - 5-6, of which in the northern part of Karelia about 2.5, in the Baltic states - 0.1 -0.2, in the Caucasus - 0.6-0.7, of which in the Caucasus Nature Reserve 0.3, in the Stavropol Territory - 0.25-0.3 thousand individuals.

Brown bear numbers have declined in many parts of their range due to forest loss and land development. However, the overgrowth of clearings contributed to the restoration of large areas of spruce forests - the main habitats of the brown bear.

Judging by the data on geographical distribution This animal has not undergone significant changes within the boundaries of its range in the USSR; it still lives throughout the entire forest zone of our country, excluding only isolated “island” populations in Western Siberia and in the central regions of the European part of the RSFSR.

Currently, there are many ways to count the number of wild animals, including brown bears. The ecology of bears, depending on their habitat in a particular region, changes significantly. Various physical-geographical and climatic conditions, the presence and accessibility of certain types of plant food, as well as the level of human development of land form adaptations that determine the degree of sedentism of the animal, its confinement to certain types of land according to the seasons of the year, daily and seasonal biorhythms, activity, etc. These adaptations, as a rule, inherent in the entire population as a whole and are considered traditional, manifested in complex biological forms of behavior of individuals in a given region.

Regional behavioral differences, as well as the typology of tree stands and terrain features may determine the choice of the brown bear survey method that gives the best results for a given region or its individual parts. For example, in the vast, sparsely forested areas of Kamchatka and Yakutia, it is most convenient to conduct aerial surveys of brown bears after they leave their dens. On Far East good results can be obtained in the fall, during the period of mass transition of brown bears to winter survival stations. In the central part of Yakutia and the North-West, as well as in the Kalinin region. techniques are effective for mapping and identifying plantar callus width impression sizes. In mountainous areas, it is possible to count bears based on traces of their life activity and visually, and in lowland forests, surveys by mapping individual areas using survey data are acceptable. The choice of a particular technique should be determined taking into account natural conditions specific territory and capabilities of accounting organizers.

Taking into account the number of brown bears is also very important in the sense that the reproductive capacity of this species is quite low: a producing female gives birth to cubs every 2, and in some cases every 3 years. The lifespan of the animal is about 30 years, but the production period is much shorter, for example, two caught in September in different years old females 20-22 and 23-25 ​​years old did not have offspring.

Brown bear- object of sport hunting. When exploiting a certain population, it is necessary to correctly determine the percentage of removal in order to maintain the population at a level that ensures stable growth and levels out losses from fishing and other causes of death of bears in the population. When conducting censuses, it is also necessary to have an idea of ​​the sex and age composition of the population. Questionnaire-survey and combined methods make it possible to compile general idea about the number of brown bears over large areas, but are unacceptable when taking censuses in a certain area due to the known errors made by the correspondents themselves due to their low training. Censuses based on vital signs or visual encounters usually provide only additional information.

The single distribution of bears over a territory, relative sedentarism, and differences in the size of tracks have long been used by researchers as auxiliary factors in censuses. However, this often required special, sometimes lengthy, training for an accountant capable of distinguishing individual bears by a complex of individual differences noticeable in the traces of their activity. This method is very complicated and excludes the possibility of conducting censuses over a large area. big amount accountants without special training. A simple, most accessible method of accounting was required. Repeated attempts were made to count bears based on the size of their paw prints, but more often they measured the longest length of the hind paw print. The fact is that the bear is a large animal, and the largest paw print was perceived with great interest. A detailed study of the motility of the animal’s movement showed the advisability of measuring the width of the plantar callus of the front paw.

A specific lifestyle (climbing trees, turning over stones, logs, etc.) caused greater development of the forelimbs in the bear: the mass of the muscles of these limbs makes up 54% of the total mass of the muscles of the front and hind legs. The increase in the load on the front paws also led to a redistribution of the time spent supporting them when running: during a slow gallop, the support of the hind paws accounted for 36 frames (at a shooting speed of 120 m/s), and 42 frames for the support of the front paws. The animal's center of gravity is also shifted forward due to the strong protrusion of the humerus, the development of the muscles of the shoulder girdle, powerful muscles cervical spine and a massive, usually lowered or horizontally elongated head. The increased load on the forelimbs causes them to be placed more firmly on the plane of support. Thus, when moving at the moment of stretching the body, the front paws are under significant load and fit tightly to the substrate, which ensures a clear imprint of the plantar callus at any gait.

The print of the hind paw, which experiences less load, changes in relation to the area of ​​support at different gaits, so it is less clear and cannot always be registered, especially in places where. the animal leaves 1-2 impressions. During a quiet step, the toes, distal and middle sections of the tarsal bones are located horizontally to the support area and ensure a tight fit of the toes and the entire callus of the hind leg. The proximal section of the tarsal bones has a constant inclination to the plane of support of 9-15°, does not have a callosal formation on the ventral side, is covered with coarse hair and comes into contact with the substrate only when the animal is sitting.

With a fast gait, medium and fast step, trot (this is a very rare gait in a bear) and gallop, the autopodium of the hind limb changes the angle of inclination relative to the fulcrum due to an increase in the tension of the extensors of the hind limb, which entails a change in the length of the imprint of this limb, t i.e. palmar callus. The large support area of ​​the hind paw also helps to reduce the pressure per 1 cm2 of the substrate, so a clear imprint of the callus remains only on soft soils. In all cases, the plantar callus impression has the most constant configuration and size. Often, when a bear moves, it places its hind leg in the imprint of its front leg. In this case, some displacements may be observed, and the width of the palmar callus impression is clearly visible, which is usually 1 cm less than the width of the plantar callus, which should be taken into account when working.

Thus, taking into account the peculiarities of the constitution and motor skills of movement of the brown bear, it is most advisable to register the impression of the plantar callus (without fingers and paw claws) as the least variable in size, and therefore the most reliable in determining whether it belongs to a particular animal. However, during measurements, especially those carried out by inexperienced observers, errors are possible due to some displacement of the animal’s paw on uneven ground. In this case, the width of the plantar callus impression may not correspond to its true width. Measuring the length of the impression helps to avoid errors, since it is known that the ratio of the width of the callus to its length is usually 2:1; Only in very large bears is there some change in this ratio, and starting from the width of the plantar callus impression of 20-22 cm (n = 8), this ratio has the expression 2: 1.60 ± 0.12. We recorded plantar callus prints with dimensions, cm: 20:12, 22:13, 25:14. The technique for registering and sizing prints is extremely simple and does not require any special training other than brief instructions.

During the research conducted in the Kalinin region. on the basis of the Central Forest Reserve, it was found that recording the size of plantar callus impressions of bears using only two parameters during the period of their wakefulness without any special time restrictions allows us to collect material reflecting the true state of the population, as well as determine the number of females with cubs of the year , and in some cases with second-year students and calculate the percentage of population growth.

In accordance with the size of plantar callus impressions, bears of a certain population can be divided into 4 classes (Table 5).

Long-term studies of the brown bear population in the area of ​​the Central Forest Reserve make it possible to provide indicators of the movement of bear numbers by year, taking into account size classes (Table 6).

When studying the sex and age composition of a particular population, one should take into account some features of ecology and behavior, individuals and family groups. Solitary bears under the age of 4 years can often be recorded visually, since this is the most mobile age group of the population, in which basic forms of behavior are still being developed, connections with the habitat continue to be established and strengthened. It is these animals that most often appear in places visited by people and walk along the same paths. Naturally, they will be registered more often. The same goes for family groups. The she-bear brings the young to the most feeding places, open to the sun, and moves slowly; only females with cubs sometimes travel long distances, but they do this not often. Adult solitary bears behave more cautiously. Sometimes it is enough for a person to appear in the habitat of such a bear for the animal to leave.

For these reasons, the probability of multiple registrations of young bears and family groups is much higher than that of single adult bears, which entails a distortion of the true data on the sex and age composition of the studied population. Only long-term data collected using a unified methodology provide the most reliable results.

Let's take, for example, data for the Kalinin region. Makarova, Khokhlov, 1972). Of the 133 visually recorded bears, the following were identified: 32 males (24%), 41 females (30.8%) and 60 cubs (45.1%). Obviously, such a ratio of individuals for a normally functioning population is unrealistic and “selectivity” of registration occurs.

In some years, the number of young of the year can reach 20% of the total number of a certain population, which is about 100 individuals. Typically, the number of underyearlings does not exceed 15%, and in a non-exploited population, which has a density close to optimal (10 individuals per 100 km2), such as in a nature reserve, the number of underyearlings only in some years exceeds this figure (see Table 6) .

In the Lapland Nature Reserve for the period 1958-1971. The sex and age composition of the population had the following indicators, %: single bears 60.8, females with young 12.4, offspring 14.4, single teenagers 12.4. Composition of the Altai bear population, %: females 13.4, young animals with them 23.2, including lonchaks 3.2 (128). In the Stolby Nature Reserve in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the sex and age structure of the group of bears, according to visual observations, is ,%: adult males 28, females with offspring 21, young under 2 years 37 and three-year-olds 6, in addition, there are 7% of empty females (51).

In our opinion, a very high percentage of young in these indicators is characterized by a low number of studied individuals (about 20).

The Gobi brown bear is also called the mazalay. This animal is a subspecies of the brown bear and lives in the Mongolian Gobi Desert.

Mazalai are perhaps the only bears that can be found only in Mongolia. Nowhere else, in any zoo in the world, will you see this species of clubfoot. IN International Fund Wildlife Protection Agency published the results of registration of all bears - there are 56 subspecies. However, the Gobi brown was not included in this list.

Description of the Gobi bear

Gobi bears have relatively small sizes. Their coarse, sparse fur is colored in light brown or whitish-bluish tones.

The chest, shoulder parts of the body and throat are “threaded” with a white stripe. The bear's claws are light. The second and third toes on the hind legs are fused by almost a third. In the summer, Mazalai males have brown fur, and in the winter they acquire a brown-gray color. Their legs and neck are darker than their body.

Lifestyle, nutrition and reproduction of Mazalai

For the winter, Mazaalai settle in caves or make dens under trees. In summer, they can be more often seen near the water, where there are many plants that are part of the bear’s diet. In addition, Gobi bears enjoy rhubarb roots, berries, wild onions and other plants that can be found in the desert. Sometimes clubfoots feed on carrion, rodents, birds, lizards or insects. Unlike other bears, Mazaalai are primarily herbivores.

After mating, the female cruelly breaks up with the male, driving him out of her territory. Every two years, a mother bear gives birth to a pair of cubs. Each weighs approximately 500 grams. In harsh times, it was noticed that the female sacrificed one of the cubs for the sake of survival.

Conservation of Gobi brown bears

Mazaalai was listed as an endangered animal species, since the number of these bears is very low, and this fact was noted in the national “Red Book”. Researchers were not too lazy to count the number of Mazalai in the territory of the “Great Gobi” and reported that there were no more than 30 bears left.

The number of Gobi clubfoot has decreased so much that it is time to sound the alarm not only at the national but also at the global level.

Limited by insufficient funding and extreme conditions in the Gobi Desert, Mazalai bears cannot be adequately studied by specialists, and as a result, a plan for developing their conservation activities has not been drawn up. However, thanks to the creation of the supplementary food supply program initiated by the government in the 80s, it plays an important role in preserving the tiny population. Gobi bears.

A group of scientists and staff of the reserve carries out monitoring, observing the behavior of the Mazalai in their natural habitat, directly in the spring, when the bears emerge from hibernation. During this period, animals need food. Food is left in special feeders until new vegetation grows. It is thanks to such data collection points in the form of feeders that it is possible to install remote-controlled cameras and study the behavior of the Mazalai.

Days in the northern hemisphere are getting longer and warmer. Of course, people are rejoicing at the coming warmth. However, the same cannot be said about polar bears. Animals feel great at temperatures of -45 degrees and below. But they experience discomfort from overheating. In addition, an increase in average temperatures creates the preconditions for a reduction in the population of the planet's largest predator.

What is happening in the Arctic today? Polar bears feed exclusively on the meat of mammals, mainly pinnipeds: seals, seals, in addition, the bear eats carrion and what the sea throws up. Sometimes, when he is especially hungry, he feeds on rodents, moss and berries.

Reduction in the area of ​​ice cover in the Arctic seas and changes in age structure sea ​​ice forces polar bears to spend more time on the coast and on islands. Staying on the shore for a long time, polar bears are deprived of access to their main source of food - seals that live on sea ​​ice, and are also at high risk of collision with a person, as a result of which they can be shot.

Today, according to scientists, there are 20-25 thousand individuals left on earth. Is it a lot or a little? Should we preserve this species? And if they should, then why? Let's figure it out.

So, are there many polar bears left? NO! Their number is extremely small. And it continues to decline, despite the protection of the animal and prohibitions on its production. Just one fact. Between 2004 and 2007, out of 80 human-tagged polar bear cubs, only two survived. Previously, at least 50% of newborns managed to survive.

The answer to the next question has already become obvious. We must, we simply must, protect this species from extinction. And this should be done not because polar bears are cute, or so that our descendants will see them in person and not in photographs. If the polar bear disappears, the Arctic ecosystem will also be under threat. As we already know, the diet polar bear- These are various marine animals, mainly pinnipeds. Based on this fact, it can be assumed that the population of these species will increase sharply after the disappearance of their main enemy. But the number of fish living in the waters of the Arctic Ocean may decrease, as there will be many more marine predators, which means they will need more food. And this will be a huge problem for both animals and people.

On the other hand, polar bears provide food for small predators that are unable to feed themselves by hunting. If a bear manages to kill a walrus, then first of all it devours the skin and fat, the rest of the carcass only in case of severe hunger. The remains of the prey are usually eaten by arctic foxes. This means that without the help of intelligence, arctic foxes may be on the verge of extinction or even die.

Thus, people must do everything to keep the polar bear alive.

What steps is Russia taking in this direction?

In Russia, polar bear hunting has been completely prohibited since 1957; this species is listed in the Red Book. Other Arctic countries began introducing hunting restrictions much later.

Since 2010, the Russian Geographical Society has supported the Polar Bear project. Its goal is the conservation and study of polar bears in the Russian Arctic, the development of non-invasive methods for collecting biological material (shed guard hairs, excrement) for genetic studies of the population structure of the species in the region.

By the way, the study of these animals by Russian scientists is the most humane thing in the world. Thus, in the USA, to study polar bears, a fang is still removed from a euthanized animal. What is it like for a predator to live without tools for hunting?

The Russian Geographical Society is constantly expanding the range of polar bear research: first it was the Barents Sea population, in 2013 an aerial census of the Chukchi-Alaskan population was carried out for the first time, and in 2014 work began on the coast of Taimyr.

The work is being carried out in collaboration with the Council on Marine Mammals, the Russian Arctic National Park, the Taimyr Nature Reserves, as well as the A.N. Institute of Ecology and Evolution. Severtsov RAS.

On March 22-24 this year, Russian scientists met with American colleagues in San Diego. During the meeting, a document was signed on a joint study of polar bears in Chukotka and Alaska in the period 2016-2018.

Thus, for many years Russia has been concerned about preserving the population of the northern predator. We understand that preserving polar bears means preserving the Arctic ecosystem, and, consequently, the Earth’s ecosystem.

Well, who will now say that Russia is pursuing only its own utilitarian goals in the Arctic?

Since ancient times, the brown bear lived side by side with our ancestors, the Slavs. They even considered him to be one of their kinsmen, respected and revered him.

But times have changed. Due to the process of urbanization in our country, forests are being cut down, and every year there is less and less food and space for animals. Modern bears suffer various diseases, the most dangerous of which is trichinosis. This disease can be transmitted to humans if they consume the meat of an infected animal. Therefore, hunters shoot these animals in insufficient numbers, mainly because of their beautiful skin, which they value as a trophy.

The man began to encounter the bear more and more often. The clubfoot attacks populated areas, wanders through landfills, in search of food. Begs people for food. He can even take food from human hands. But still, we must not forget that this is a wild animal.

In the summer, many of us like to visit the forest and pick mushrooms and berries there. For their own safety, such people should know the habits of a brown bear.
The bear is an omnivore: it eats both plant and animal foods; carrion is a delicacy for it. He runs fast (can reach speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour). The animal does not have keen eyesight, but has an excellent sense of smell. Despite his apparent clumsiness, he is very agile. Clubfoot runs fast (can reach speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour). Bears climb trees well, especially young ones. Toptygin is very smart, it’s not for nothing that they are shown so often in the circus. He is easy to train.

The character of this animal is unpredictable; the bear rarely attacks a person, but such cases are still known. Most bears understand perfectly well that people are their enemies, and try to avoid them. Before hibernating for the winter, the bear skillfully covers its tracks. He meanders around the den for a long time.

Often, collectors of forest gifts see signs that an animal is somewhere near them, but do not pay attention to it. They notice fresh ones: footprints, droppings. A clubfoot can knock on wood. But it also happens that a man and an animal are close to each other, but do not notice it.
In the summer, a mother bear with her cubs is especially dangerous. She, however, like any mother, will protect her cubs. Kids, like all children, are curious; they can approach a person, grab his clothes, and start playing with him. In this case, you need to slowly retreat.

Toptygin can also be dangerous at other times of the year, for example, in the spring during breeding. In winter, if the animal has not accumulated enough fat and does not go into hibernation (a connecting rod bear). It is difficult to escape from these individuals; the best thing is to shoot him. But not all clubfoot wandering in winter are necessarily cranks. Bears sleep very lightly, they can be scared away by hunters and lumberjacks. In this case, the bear will look for another place for a den. IN winter period, most often, you can find a wounded animal. He can attack a person because he is an easy prey for him.

If you still manage to run into an adult bear “nose to nose”, and at the same time he behaves aggressively, growls, rushes at you, then throw something at his feet. You can sacrifice your lunch with a fragrant piece of sausage. Thus, the bear will be distracted by what was thrown to it. And you yourself will gain precious time and have time to quietly leave. Experts on this animal do not advise running away from a bear, since it is a natural hunter. The bear will rush to catch up with you.

In this article we present the results of a study of the nutrition of brown bears in the Central part of European Russia using the example of several districts of the Tver and Novgorod regions, where a very large complex of biotechnical measures is being carried out aimed at increasing the number of brown bears.

The bear is an omnivorous animal, feeding on a variety of animals (from insects to moose and deer) and a variety of plant foods.

The size of its habitat depends on the abundance of food.

In forests rich in food, the animal can live on an area of ​​300 - 800 hectares.

In the mountains, as a rule, it migrates: starting in spring, it feeds in the valleys, where the snow melts earlier, then goes to the chars and alpine meadows, then gradually descends into the forest belt, when berries and nuts ripen here.

Often, for the first half of summer, a bear lives on one slope of a mountain, and for the second half, on another, tens of kilometers from the first (“Hunting in Russia” WiMo, 1992).

The climatic features of this strip of Russia in winter are known for their mildness. This contributes to the earlier awakening of bears from winter sleep.

The entire period of activity throughout the year is divided into four stages: early spring, spring, summer, autumn.

Having left the den, bears still have sufficient reserves of fat and are in no hurry to leave their winter refuge. For two weeks, they may not move further than 200 m from the den. This depends on the height of the snow cover in the forest.

Bears are very lethargic at this time. Having come out to a place well lit by the sun, they can freeze for a long time in one position, swaying and only occasionally looking in different directions.

Not far from the main den, there are usually several more bedding areas with bedding. When, finally, hunger makes itself felt, bears begin to wander in search of food and often anthills fall under their disfavor. The last to leave the dens are females with cubs born in winter.

To restore their strength, they need high-calorie food. In the early spring period The basis of their diet is food of animal origin. Bears have been repeatedly observed pursuing litters of wild boars and elk calves. On 16 thousand hectares (the area of ​​the studied area) there are 17 attachments, which are regularly updated.

Visiting them begins around the beginning of April, with the exception of 2007. The first bear was observed at the bait on March 10 due to the abnormally warm winter.

Driving around the boundaries of the site, every now and then you come across traces of bears returning from their winter quarters. The number of bears visiting the baits increases every week.

As a rule, a bear does not throw away carrion it finds, especially if it is a large animal. But there is a fact when an animal, having fed once or twice, throws the carcass and leaves in the direction from which it came.

This was confirmed in the following. We laid out two fallen calves in different places. One is where traces of the observed bear are constantly found (the width of the palmar callus is 14 cm), the second is five kilometers to the south.

As a result, within three days the bear ate the bait, which lay in the place where its tracks were most often found. Then, after a three-day break, he found the second calf, ate the entrails and left.

The direction of the wind during the study changed from north to north-west, that is, it can be assumed that the bear simply walked around this area of ​​​​the forest. A day later, he again came to the burial place of the first bait, although there was nothing left there except bones.

After a week, the bear did not appear at the second visit, but visited the remains of the first one regularly. It could be assumed that he sensed the presence of another, larger bear and moved away. But during our observations, we did not come across any bears or mother bears with cubs in this area.

Having examined this area more carefully, we discovered a marker tree with old claw marks at a height of more than two meters.

The withdrawing bear confirmed the fact of the territorial attachment of the individuals.

Throughout the summer and autumn, its traces can be found along the roads in the vicinity of this tract. As a rule, bear cubs behave this way at the beginning of their independent life. They look for food where their mother took them in their first two years of life.

Both in the early spring and spring, as well as in the autumn, there is a very high activity in visiting the bait. In the spring, this is due to the replenishment of the lack of calories after winter sleep, and in the fall, with the replenishment of fat reserves before going to the den.

One adult male is capable of eating about 30 kg of meat at one time, and if you take into account that at least three individuals visit the bait, then you have to lay the bait two or even three times a week.

I would like to note that laying a bait of cattle has a positive effect on bear attacks on herds of cows. Over the seven years of the farm’s existence, no such facts have been recorded.

Bears are practically not picky about food of animal origin, but we decided to check what they still prefer. Having buried a horse, a cow, an elk and a pig at the same depth (30 cm) and at a distance of about 3 meters from each other, they began to observe.

The bears ate the bait in the following sequence - the elk, horse, cow, pig were practically not touched, they only ate internal organs. In all cases, the internal organs and udders of cows are eaten first; they are the richest biologically active substances and enzymes.

Later, when organizing bait hunts, when a bear worthy of becoming a trophy appeared, we restrained it with a bait of horses.

As noted above, bears, like most other animal species, have their own territories, which they mark with scratches on the bark of trees, usually coniferous trees.

This fact has been noted by researchers before. The area of ​​an individual plot is from 5-15 to several tens of square kilometers (Mashkin V.I., 2003).

The bear is a vagabond, wandering in search of the areas richest in food, but almost always returning to spend the winter in the places where it was born. Any, even the most powerful biotechnology, is powerless here.

Every autumn we observe a massive exodus of bears outside the boundaries of the farm. Bears are characterized by changes in biotopes throughout the year, and in some areas, seasonal migrations.

In the Urals, sometimes bears make transitions from the western to the eastern slopes in the fall, covering distances of up to 300 km. Changes in habitats are associated with changes in feeding conditions, with the massive appearance of blood-sucking insects, with earlier snowfall on slopes of certain exposures, etc. Movements can be caused by forest fires or drought (Mashkin V.I., 2003).

Over the course of several years, I have had to observe, during visual surveys on oats in the fall and on bait in the spring, the behavior of bears when meeting each other. They have an age hierarchy and the right of the strong to be able to feed on, say, the same bait, but this, as a rule, occurs when there is a shortage of food.

Once I had to observe how, in an oat field of about three hectares, eleven bears of different age categories and a herd of nine wild boars were simultaneously feeding. At the edge of all feeding fields, as I already noted, bait is laid.

The bears did not react to each other in any way, only from time to time some of them rose to the hind legs to inspect new arrivals to the feeding field. They approached the bait one by one. Having made sure that once again one of the brothers had eaten, the next one approached.

Bears usually go out to feed at sunset, but the older and more cautious the animal is, the later it comes out. Repeatedly when driving around feeding fields, I had to observe feeding bears in the interval from 9 to 11 a.m., but these were young bears.

To determine daily activity, for a long time I observed bears from observation towers located directly on feeding fields and sites in various hunting grounds of the Tver region in the Penovsky, Toropetsky, Selizharovsky, Firovsky, Andreapolsky districts, as well as the Marevsky district of the Novgorod region.

As a result of the research, it turned out that both in spring and autumn, bears visited feeding fields and areas in the period from 21:00 to 24:00. This was followed by a break until four o’clock in the morning, and bears again appeared wanting to feed, but at that time of day there were no young bears to be seen.

The young began to appear around six o'clock in the morning. However, in the spring of 2005, instability was noticed in visiting the camp, and in all of the above areas.

More than 90% of the bears went out to bait reluctantly and after 12 o’clock at night or between 4 and 7 o’clock in the morning. For the period from 2000 to 2007, this was observed for the first time. This may be due to the fact that the winter was not very cold, and since the fall the bears have stored up a sufficient amount of fat.

After a successful spring bait hunt (early May), the subcutaneous fat layer of the male (the width of the palmar callus was 15 cm) on the seat was 8 cm thick.

The need for animal feed in the early spring continues until the appearance of plant feed. As a rule, this occurs at the beginning of May, and plants are still the basis of the bears’ diet.

This fact was previously noted by researchers in their works. At this time, bears on bait can be seen less and less often. In the spring of 2007, at the Zhukovskoye hunting farm in the Smolensk region, a bear with a palmar callus width of 18 cm carefully collected oats from the ground that had been sown in the food field.

In the spring, bears often eat various ballasts: stump rot, cereal rags, construction garbage anthills.

At the same time, they eat spruce and pine needles, blueberry shoots and their roots, buds of aspen, linden, rowan, maple, willow, and sometimes chaga ( birch mushroom), as well as various sedges that melted from under the snow, gnawing the stems to the internodes, in the swamps - cotton grass and squat cranberries (V.S. Pazhetnov, 1990).

We have identified several major and minor species from different plant families that form the basis of the diet from spring to late autumn. These are mainly grasses, sedges and umbelliferae.

A study of bear excrement was conducted in the spring to determine the composition of feed.

The ratio of animal and plant feeds turned out to be almost the same. In the early spring period, excrement consists of more than 95% of digested meat, the remaining 5% consists of tree buds, plant roots, spruce and pine needles and the so-called ballast.

15 excrement samples collected from different locations on the farm were examined. Based on the structure of plant food remains, it turned out that preference is given to more juicy shoots, such as dissected hogweed (Heracleum sibiricum L.), angelica (Archangelica officinalis), angelica (Angelica silvestris), and common raspberry leaves (Rubus idaeus).

These herbaceous plants and the shrub are united by the ability to stimulate and have a beneficial effect on the gastrointestinal tract, especially since after a long stay in a state of winter sleep, in which neither the stomach nor the intestines work, bears urgently need to restore the functions of these organs.

Looking ahead, I would like to note that fragments of these plants are found in excrement from early spring to autumn.

The number of plant species eaten by bears is not the same in different months. The minimum species diversity of plants in the diet of animals in April is 7% (cereals, sedges) of the total list of species eaten by animals. This is due to the beginning of the plant growing season, when the main food plants have not yet sprouted (Okaemov V.S., 2004).

As for mammals and ungulates, based on the structure and appearance of the hair found in excrement, these are wild boar (Sus scrofa), elk (Alces alces), badger (Meles meles), which may have died for some reason.

The remaining components of excrement (spruce needles, insects, mosses) are ballast.