Alutaguse Forest Camera News
News of Alutaguse nature camera.
Feeding ground bear cubs
Photos: Hannes Saag
Translation: Liis
Bear cubs
Here are the one and a half year old bear cubs Hans and Grete who visit the viewing grounds. Since May, when the female bear probably was in a rut, they lead their own independent bear lives. They move around together, and when together in camera view they are easy to tell apart: one of the siblings has a much darker coat.
Last year and this spring the cubs were still three but the smallest one hasn’t been seen now. Studies show that of the new-born young only half see the first spring. During their first year of life 60% perish and in the second, 20% of the young animals. ( Mati Kaal “Pruunkaru“, publisher “Valgus“ 1980.).
If there is enough food for the brown bears in the forests young females, over three and a half years old, generally give birth to one to two cubs, older ones to two up to three. Larger litters, four to five cubs, are extremely rare in the whole of the brown bears’ population area. The females rut with intervals of two to three years after the birth of the cubs.
As you see our brown bear population needs careful and continuous monitoring and it does not increase quickly. By and large there may be about 600 brown bears in Estonia; in the spring about sixty female bears will be moving around with cubs born in the same year. And all nature friends can do their own sums onwards from this.
With a darkish fur