DESCRIPTION

Light brown to dark brown, squat plantigrade, shortened tail. Necklace clear among cubs. (Height at the withers: 90-110 cm).

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HABITAT

The bear lives in mixed forests, taiga, mountain forests (but not in Haute-Savoie). In the north, reach the tundra and mountain pastures. It is usually between 900 and 1800 meters above sea level.

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WAY OF LIFE

They usually move early in the morning and in the evening. They remain solitary until the season of love. Very good swimmer; it also knows how to climb trees, but cubs do it only by obligation. It is generally harmless to the man.

The brown bear overwinters in a den covered with twigs, moss, grasses and other dry vegetation, located in a well protected area or in a burrow that it has dug himself. It sometimes prepares several shelters before the winter. It can stay there for weeks in a row, drawing on the fat reserves it has built up in the fall. Contrary to what is observed in a truly hibernating animal, its body temperature never drops beyond that observed during normal but deep sleep. It only drops from 3 to 4 ° C. In fact, the bear is a false hibernator. In winter, its physiological activity is reduced; it sleeps a lot; the heart rate slows down by 44%. However, the brown bear is likely to become active again at any time.

The territory of adult males, solitary, covers those of several adult females and encroaches more or less on those of other males. Normally, the bear travels 2 to 3.5 km in a day at a speed of 5 to 6 km / hour (walking) or 10 to 12 km / hour (trot). Its maximum speed reaches 50 to 60 km / hour or 22 to 51 km / hour (gallop). Although they are sedentary animals, bears move to enjoy a localized food source. These displacements can reach several tens of kilometers and can be considered as more or less regular local migrations.

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FOOD

It eats wild berries, roots, shoots and grasses, ants, insect larvae, fish, birds, eggs, mushrooms, honey, and carrion. In autumn, it eats a lot of fruits, acorns, chestnuts and chestnuts. Occasionally, it consumes grazing animals, domestic or wild sometimes attacking elk, reindeer, sheep, cows and horses.

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BREEDING

The female calves in its hibernating den giving birth to a litter of 1 to 3 small, rarely more. Newborns are blind and almost naked. They only have the approximate size of a rat (500 gr). At the age of 3 weeks, they open their eyes. When they are about 3 months old, the cubs venture out of the den. The young live in the house for about 4 months. The female bear is an extremely present mother who vehemently defends her young against aggression. It is breastfeeding for six months. The emancipation of young people can only intervene between 1.5 and 3.5 years. They can cross more than 100 km when they leave their mother and sometimes remain together 1 to 2 years. Young females begin breeding at the earliest at age 5 and not every year. The female usually calves every 3 years or more.

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THREAT

The species is very threatened in France. France waited miserably for 1972 to protect them and even reintroduce specimens from Slovenia. The "OURS" plan was set up in 1984 by the Ministry of the Environment at the initiative of a group "Ours" which brings together many associations of national nature protection, elected officials and Pyrenean shepherds. The bear appears on the IUCN Red Book (Threatened Species) (1976). Once widespread throughout Europe, brown bears are now important populations only in northern and central Europe. Attempts to reintroduce in the Pyrenees, which concerned only a limited number of individuals, provoked very mixed reactions from the inhabitants. The brown bear needs an extensive home range consisting of forest areas that provide peace. In France in 1993, 8 to 10 individuals remained in the Pyrenees. There were about 70 in 1954. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the evolution of certain environmental and legal factors (agricultural abandonment and increase in afforestation rate in the mountains, ranking the bear among the protected species) as well as the increase of the bear population present in the Italian Alps, which extends its range by initiating a recolonisation of Switzerland, makes it possible to envisage a spontaneous reappearance of the bear in the French Alps before the middle of the 21st century.

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