Bear bonanza in Carnaval Season

By: David Jackson, Field Coordinator Andean Bear Research Project (FUNDEBO)

On the 28th February, 2006, the final day of the famous South American ‘carnaval’, Alberto Tabango (research assistant) and Peter Thiem (Australian volunteer) were searching for fresh Andean bear signals in the Alto Choco reserve. Their objective was to discover a suitable area to position one of our Iznachi traps to capture and collar future Andean bears. They were looking for evidence such as paw prints, scratch marks (on trees), consumed bear foodstuffs, feces and evident bear pathways.

What they were to discover was a place better than they could have imagined to position a trap. One evidence source they weren’t expecting to come across was a bear itself. This day they had the privilege of seeing three, a very rare occurrence as any Andean bear biologist will acknowledge. Their story goes as follows…

Alberto and Peter were walking through the ‘El Valle’ region of the reserve in the search for bear evidence. They were passing an area we had previously identified to have a number of aguacatillo trees (wild avocado, Ocotea spp.) when all of a sudden Alberto heard the intense ‘ooosh ooosh’ sound characteristic of a distressed bear. Slightly alarmed, and rushing with adrenalin, Alberto informed Peter, who shared the excitement, but with a little more precaution as he had never seen a bear before and wasn’t sure what to expect from the experience.

After recuperating from their initial shock, still effervescing with excitement, they looked up, and directly above them were two bears sitting in the tree. Returning their gaze to the undergrowth, struck by the attentions of another intense clamor, they saw a third bear running rapidly out of sight into the thick lush vegetation. According to Alberto, who has worked with the Andean Bear Project for 6 years, and knows the markings of collared bears as well as anyone, one of the bears in the tree was a previously radio-tracked bear named Marjory. His reasoning for this is that one bear in the tree was still wearing a collar, yet giving no signal. This narrows things down to one of two possibilities. The collared bear was either Amanda or Marjory, two females we have previously tracked, yet their collar batteries have expired meaning they still wear the collar although it is now useless to our studies. Alberto is almost certain due to the bears size and markings that it was Marjory and not Amanda.

The other bear up the tree was much larger than the collared bear, as was the one seen darting away into the vegetation, says Alberto. He approximates the bear in the tree to have been around 70kg, around the weight of a young male, and the other one of similar size. This leads us to theorise that the collared female was ‘on heat’ and the two other bears spotted were in fact males fighting over her.

Peter and Alberto were left in astonishment and awe as they were treated to a show of amazing acrobatics. The bears jumped from branch to branch like monkeys claimed Alberto. Their agile movements defeat reasoning for their large body size and weight. The bears hollered nervously as Peter took photographs and filmed, reflecting their shy and reclusive nature. After two hours of observation, the bears began to snap the tree branches, This behavior is thought to be a sign that the bears are to soon jump from the tree, as reported by Armando (project director) a few years ago in a similar situation. This proved to be the case again and Peter and Alberto didn’t have to wait long before they were presented with another remarkable exhibit of Andean Bear agility. Marjory calmly descended the tree from ten metres, mounted on a falling branch as if she was riding the nose on a breaking wave at Waikiki. Following her shortly, the male followed her style, but bailing from an approximate height of 8 metres. Peter was ‘stoked!!!’