Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project. A 40 year research summary

Tallian, A., Arnemo, J., Evans, A., Friebe, A., Fröbert, O., Hansen, J., Heeres, R., Hertel, A., Kopatz, A., Mattisson, J., Ordiz. A., Støen, O.G., Thiel, A., Zedrosser, A., and Kindberg. J. 2025. Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project - A 40 year research summary. NINA Report 2589. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. The Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project (SBBRP) is one of the world's longest running research projects on brown bears. In the following report, we describe the current state of knowledge about brown bears in Scandinavia, summarize key findings, methodologies, and implications of the research conducted under the SBBRP over the last four decades, and outline future directions. This report is divided into 8 sections; each section also includes ’Key Points’ in the beginning, which summarizes important information found in each section. Section 1 provides background information, including a short history of the SBBRP and how its research and mission have evolved through time, as well as descriptions of our core study areas in Sweden, and an overview of both current and historical methodologies. Section 2 gives an overview of the brown bear population in Scandinavia. This includes details about their current and historical ranges and how those have been influenced by management, gives an overview of their population ecology including population size and demography, describes the general characteristics of brown bears, discusses health and disease, and summarizes what we know about brown bear genetics and connectivity. Section 3 discusses brown bear behavior and ecology including their diet and foraging patterns, their habitat, movement, dispersal, home range characteristics, and space use, the fundamentals of their mating system, reproduction, and overall fitness, and their social and individual behavior putting those into the context of intraspecific interactions, and describes their denning ecology. Section 4 describes the Scandinavian brown bear in the context of interactions with other species in the landscape. This includes prey species such as moose, reindeer, and livestock, as well as sympatric predators such as wolves, wolverine, and lynx. Section 5 discusses human-brown bear interactions from multiple angles. This includes how human disturbance can affect bear behavior, the effects of hunting on the bear population as well as on their behavior and evolution, and also looks at what we know about direct human-bear encounters in Scandinavia. Section 6 gives an overview of general brown bear physiology, describes what is known about ecotoxicology in bears such exposure to lead (Pb), and summarizes how bears have been used as translational models in human medical research. Section 7 is focused on research tools and ethics, highlighting how the SBBRP has been at the forefront of brown bear capture-anesthesia methodology over the last 40 years, as well as describing our research on how capture can affect bear physiology and behavior. Finally, Section 8 discusses the future and long-term goals of the SBBRP and highlights core areas of future research and development. Our long-term goal is to continue to monitor the Scandinavian brown bear population and facilitate local management decisions, contribute to the understanding of brown bear biology and ecology in the context of our changing world, and provide nature-based solutions based on brown bear physiology to the field of human medicine.