One of the actions of the Croatian part of “LIFE DINALP BEAR“ project is to monitor the movements of bears in the vicinity of the Rijeka – Zagreb highway. For that purpose four GPS collars have been purchased.

In the period from 12 May to 12 June 2015 a total of 23 foot snare traps have been set in the forestry areas of Vrbovsko (feeding site Tisova kosa) and Fužine (feeding site Slavica). Two bears were captured at each of the sites in the following sequence:

One more bear (B45, Matej) was captured and marked but he managed to take off the collar less than 48 hours after the capture.

The collars are set to use the „virtual fence“ what is in our case the corridor of 1 km on the each side along the highway. When the bear enters this area the GPS makes one location each 15 minutes, contrary to one per hour when outside of the corridor. In this short period each of the four bears have already entered the corridor and two even crossed the highway and returned back; each time over the tunnel (see the maps with movements).

We thank to the great help provided by local bear managers dr. sc. Dario Majnarić, Slavko Medved and Mladen Švast.