Young citizen sensors for managing large carnivores: Lessons from 40 years of monitoring a brown bear population

Abstract Large carnivores encounter various threats from human activities. Population trend detection among carnivore species and implementation of management policies based on monitoring are urgently needed for human–carnivore coexistence. We demonstrate how young citizens have helped reveal long‐term trends in brown bear field sign detection rates following a government policy change (i.e., abolishment of the spring cull). We used a 40‐year dataset of field signs collected by volunteer college students in northern Japan and analyzed the resulting data using state‐space models. The spring cull had a significant negative impact on the number of grids with field signs; the detection rate under spring cull pressure declined from 19 to 0% between 1976 and 1990. However, abolishment of the spring cull in 1990 had a significant positive effect on the number of grids with field signs; the detection rate increased from 0 to 13% between 1991 and 2015, suggesting that the government policy change strongly affected the threatened brown bear population. Structured monitoring schemes, simplicity and/or attractiveness in monitoring targets may ensure the data quality and duration of citizen‐based monitoring. These findings suggest a high potential for engaging college students in developing sustainable monitoring of large carnivore populations and in supporting wildlife management.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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