Habitat selection of Hokkaido brown bears changed seasonally and being influenced by human-disturbed landscape features

Abstract As large carnivore populations recover, identifying space and time overlap with humans becomes important to minimize the risk of human-carnivore interactions. In response to increased brown bear occurrences in Hokkaido Island, human-bear conflicts have dramatically surged, resulting in the culling of over a thousand bears. However, spatiotemporal prioritization to manage the conflict has yet been conducted due to limited knowledge of habitat selection. We collected GPS data of female bears in northern Hokkaido and developed a habitat selection model (HSM) for four seasons with habitat covariates, including human-modified landscape features. According to our HSM, brown bears exhibited significant seasonality in habitat selection, indicating the importance of phenology of key food. Wet forests were constantly selected across seasons, whereas access to riparian zones was profoundly restricted. Positive selection for plantations during spring to early summer turned negative later, whereas secondary forests were positively selected during autumn. The distance to human-disturbed lands had a great effect on the model fit. These results indicate that the effects of human-disturbed landscape features on habitat selection were not negligible across seasons. Wet forests, plantations, and secondary forests are commonly located in proximity to human-settled areas, indicating important factors responsible for bear occurrence. Considering the depopulated aging rural society in Japan, spatiotemporal prioritization of these landscape features is necessary to mitigate conflicts and to promote coexistence with large carnivore nearby on the small island.