Brown Bear Winter Feeding Ecology in the Area with Supplementary Feeding — Eastern Carpathians (Slovakia)

Abstract

ABSTRACT We performed snow tracking of brown bear (Ursus arctos) in the area of the Eastern Carpathians affected by supplementary feeding during the winter periods from 2007 to 2013. On each snow track we recorded all food habits and collected all scats. From these data we calculated occurrence frequency of food habits on snow tracks, occurrence frequency, volumetric proportion and energy values of food items in scats. We revealed that: i) the most frequent food source on snow tracks was corn from supplementary feeding places for ungulates (FOST = 64%); ii) crops for ungulates was the most important food group found in scat samples of bears (EDEC = 61%, EDECST = 53%); iii) the analysis of the inter-seasonal (late autumn, winter and early spring) changes in winter bear diet based on scat analyses revealed decreasing importance of hard mast and fruit, and increasing importance of invertebrates, herbs and wood biomass and crops for ungulates from autumn to spring; iv) bears searched for food at lower elevati...