Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
The sloth bear is restricted to India, with about 20000 remaining. Unfortunately their population is falling, as a result of habitat loss.
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 These bears live alongside tigers and many other species though they are not particularly easy to find.
Over time we hope to list many places where you can visit bears and see them in their wild home, these will appear here, and a list of posts we have published on bears will appear below these links
The world has 8 species of bear. Although an incredibly successful family in their own right, humans have not been good for the various species which make up this family.
Click on a picture to be taken to its page
Below is a family tree showing current understood relation between the bear species
I wrote, yesterday about the fears for the future of the polar bear species, and the problems that global warming...
Polar bears are wild creatures. They roam widely, with some having been tracked to a home range of...
Rhino are unable to sweat, which means that as temperatures increase, both black and white rhino are more and more reliant on finding shade, in order to keep...
The Andes cloud forest fill a large part of the Ecuadorian highlands.
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Although very rich in flora and fauna, few large mammals are found in the Andean Cloud forests, including the Yungas and parts of the Choco exceptions being the threatened mountain tapir, spectacled bear and yellow-tailed woolly monkey.
Ecuador has a national park called
Sangay national park. click here for our listing of it
2200 polar bears live on the west coast of Greenland. It is unknown how many live on the east coast, but this group appears to be living in a place where they were formerly thought incapable of surviving.
Continue reading “Unknown, seemingly impossible Polar bear population found living in Greenland”
Sweden’s Lapland is a beautiful area. Lying in the far north of Sweden, like much of Sweden the land is heavily forested. Wolves are rare in Sweden, though this is as a result of over hunting – Europe has said that Sweden needs 170-270 wolves for a healthy population. Sweden is a huge country, which could support far more if they were allowed to naturally control their numbers. Being a country about the size of France, but with far fewer people, stating the country can only support 170 wolves is ridiculous. Bear numbers are higher, and there are thought to be around 2000 wolverines within its border (this was a population I was quoted if we visited).
It should be noted, that, the only difference between here and further south, is the number of wolverines – we did not get this far north, and where we were wolverines are just occasional visitors. The one difference is the reindeer presence. There are around 260,000 reindeer in Sweden, though it should be noted that these are only semi wild.
Sweden’s bear population is going up at the moment, and is currently thought to be around 2800. Generally, it takes some local knowledge to see wild bears, and your best chance is in a bear hide. We have one listed in the hides section of of this website. One of the big advantages of doing this in the northern parts of Sweden is the sunlight lasts more of the night. As bears are largely nocturnal, this allows more time to watch. When I visited the bear hide, it got to dark to see at about 2am but got light enough again at 5am.
Below is a video of the area. As you can see, while there is some wildlife, there is not a great deal. Generally you need a guide to take you out as finding the wildlife is a difficult job. We hope to be adding plenty of links below.
This reserve covers a complex to trevane covered in ravines deep canyons and has a mild climate with abundant rainfall. As a result much of the area is covered by rainforest and there is a great deal of wildlife. It is a total of 1,400 square miles or 3,600 square kilometres.
Animals of particular interest include the leopard, the clouded leopard, the pygmy slow loris, the yellow belly pheasant, and long-tailed pheasant, the giant salamander, five step snake and many more. Others include the stump tailed macaque, the suman sheep, the pangolin, the black bear, the lynx, the otter, the forest musk deer, the samba deer, the jackal, the mandarin duck, the sparrow hawk and a few more.
Rare species include the bison, the wild goat, the wild boar, the wildcat, the civit cat, the flying squirrel and several more.
The Pyrennes in the south west of France, and the corresponding area across the border, are a wonderful area of wilderness. There are currently about 64 bears living in this area. So where are we on the road to recovery?
Were the the entire Pyrennes mountains wild, it is thought that these mountains could support 600 bears. However, this area is not an area that is set aside for wilderness – there is a whole population of humans living in these mountains (almost 700,000 people live here).
It is thought that the bear population of the Pyrennes could potentially get to 250 in its current form.
American Black bears are far and away the most numerous bear in the world by some margin. It is thought that at least 800,000 American black bears still roam the continental north America – though the closely related Asiatic black bear has a far smaller population of about 50,000 spread across south-eastern Asia and is therefore far more endangered (the spectacled bear is also thought to be relatively closely related).
In America, black bears are relatively common sites where they are found.
Over the last couple of years, snow leopards have been sighted in Pingwu county – Sichuan province. This confirms that the range of the snow leopard has expanded eastward as this reserve takes shape.
Pingwu supports around 335 Pandas, or around 20% of the Chinese total.
This Giant Panda national park will include 70.25% of known Panda habitat 87.5% of the Pandas currently living in the wild.
Continue reading “As the huge panda reserve takes shape in SW China other species are benefitting”In the 1990s the bear population of this mountain range consisted of about 50-65 in the western population, and 14-20 in the east. No more than 30 years later, that population numbers 300-400 (as much as a 6 fold increase).
How did they do this, and can the success be replicated. It is thought that just two stems were responsible for their recovery.
These bears are almost entirely vegetarian, and while efficient hunters whatever meat the consume, here it is usually carrion – animals that have naturally died, or been killed by other animals.
As a result, the bears are far less of a threat than wolves (though even wolves can cause little threat if farming is set up correctly). Bee keepers are threatened to a greater degree by the bears, however by returning to ancient bee keeping habits, this can be reduced to a minimum.
Back in the 1950s there is thought to have been as many as 1000 bears in the wilds of Spain, so the population still has some recovery to go through.
Never-the-less this is a good news story that is extremely encouraging that large carnivores and omnivores are still capable of surviving in the modern landscape of a western European country.
This is well worth a visit. A link will hopefully be added to this page in the next week or so
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