Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Montana Wildlife
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

A collaborative research project to get more information about grizzly bear status in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem. The objectives of this project are:To conduct an extensive survey of hiking trails, forest roads, power and fence lines and other wildlife travel routes in the Cabinet -Yaak Ecosystem (CYE) to identify the location of bear rubs and establish those rubs as repeat hair collection sites;To deploy baited bear hair snagging corrals at predetermined sites throughout the CYE based on a 5 X 5 km grid with 1 hair corral per cell for each of 5 14-day detection occasions;To conduct repeat surveys of established bear rubs and hair corrals to collect bear hair samples for genetic analysis; To identify the species, sex, and individual identity of bear from the hair collected; and to perform various analyses on genetic results including, but not necessarily limited to, estimates of population abundance, distribution, gene flow and models of regional abundance patterns.