Sunday, October 4, is running out, the alarm is not sounding. Another day passes in which the bear traps in Piva and Durmitor remain empty, and the alarm remains silent...
Due to that alarm, veterinarian Slaven Reljić arrived in Plužine a few days earlier from Zagreb. On October 4, he checked the alarm for the last time at 19.15:XNUMX. Still nothing.
Two hours later, what everyone is waiting for happens. Still no one is sure if the alarm went off because a bear was caught in the trap, because it could also be a wild pig, but - everyone is on their feet and in record time they agree to leave for Borje, in the Nature Park (PP) "Piva", where a trap was set two days earlier.
Already around 22 pm, Reljić, Nataša Barbić, PhD student at the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Zagreb, where, although she lives in Australia, where there are none, she chose to study bears, met in Plužine with the supervisor of PP "Piva" Ivan Krunić.
They headed for Borje.
At the same time, Aleksandar Perović, who has been working at the Center for the Protection and Study of Birds (CZIP) since 2012, has been working on a program of research on large animals from Podgorica. For him, this Sunday is special.
"I finished biology only because of my love for bears and wolves". That Sunday is also special for him because he is the first from Montenegro to participate in the bear tagging program in Montenegro.
He was in Borje at 23.57:22 p.m. To arrive so quickly, he says, the ban on movement after XNUMX p.m., which is in effect in Nikšić due to the coronavirus epidemic, helped him.
When he arrived in Borje, the bear was already asleep under the effect of an anesthetic, which Reljić, with the light of a lamp, successfully fired from the car, adhering to one of the important rules - safe distance, even if the animal is tied.
"It could have been a young bear, whose mother is nearby," they later explained one of the possible risky situations.
In one hour and seven minutes of processing, all the parameters describing the general and health condition of the caught animal were known.
Borko, named after Borje, where he was caught, is between four and five years old, weighs 146 kilograms. The size of his paws, the circumference of his head, neck... A blood sample was taken. Around 2.08:XNUMX a.m., he started to slowly wake up from anesthesia, and not long after that, he moved his head, shoulders...
"Borko is healthy as hell," Aleksandar joyfully told "Vijesti" reporters during a tour of the field on Friday.
That day, at the place where Borko was lying, we also came across bear excrement. Aco took the sample. He will wait for the results of the DNA analysis, maybe it will show that he is Borkov. Reljić, an associate at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Zagreb, is a regular member of bear tagging teams and a participant in several similar actions in Croatia. He was surprised by the speed with which Borko fell into the trap. Aleksandar jokes that he "fell for baklava".
"The traps have only been set for two days. In Croatia, our fastest capture was after two nights, but that was at feeding grounds where bears have been feeding for 40, 50 years," he said.
Since 2017, Aleksandar has been working on a program to determine the number of brown bear populations in Montenegro, and he did this by taking excrement samples in the field. He also planned locations for traps in Piva and on Durmitor, so he did not hide his enthusiasm for the successful action in front of his colleague from Croatia:
"And what did Aco tell you... how much will he get hold of".
"In three nights".
"I missed by one," he joked.
After waking up from anesthesia and going for a walk, Borko, according to the data from the collar that will track his movements, headed towards the Sušice canyon. In the first three days, he covered 15 kilometers, which, experts explain, speaks of the good condition of the animal, as well as the quality of the habitat.
The collar sends a signal and allows you to monitor its movement, habitat, feeding dynamics...
For the purpose of telemetry monitoring, it is planned to mark another bear on the territory of NP "Durmitor". The data obtained in this way will, as the CZIP said, be used for the development of the Brown Bear Management Plan on the territory of PP "Piva" and NP "Durmitor".
The activity, they add, will help to introduce the brown bear to the general public and break prejudices and fear of this animal, but also to react preventively in situations where a conflict between animals and people is possible.
The interlocutors explain that it is important to know how much a certain habitat can support an animal in terms of numbers, but also how many people who share space with bears are ready to accept the animal's presence.
"What kind of fuse is there in a man not to take a rifle and shoot a bear because it took a sheep from him?" It is up to us to mitigate, to make that scale as high as possible, so that people live like our ancestors, who were in coexistence with large beasts", says Perović, explaining the importance of telemetry monitoring and why it is important to know where the bears are moving.
"Borko was caught in Borje in Piva, he went to Sušice canyon, maybe he will walk to Tara, to NP Durmitor, make a big circle, that only speaks of the quality of the habitat, and what habitat he prefers is also important to me. I know that it is in the canyons, but how long does it stay there, where is it during hyperphagia, where will it be in November, when should it den, what are the areas that we should pay attention to in order to tell the locals, say in Grabovica, that bears prefer certain areas mountain for denning, that it must be protected during the winter and that a fly must not pass there. That the people who live there should be told to avoid those areas and to choose others," explains Perović.
He is grateful to supervisors Krunić and Janjić for the knowledge they imparted on local conditions. This also facilitated the selection of locations for setting traps. "Presence must be proven to do these things."
NP "Durmitor" supervisor Milić Bato Janjić grew up in the village of Grabovica, where he still lives today with his family, and not far from the border of the Park is their katun. He's been seeing bears all his life.
"These medjes of ours are good, they don't attack. Cows are constantly in the woods and meadows. We find tracks next to the house, it passed in the evening, but they didn't touch anything at our place. Something ate the beehive in the village, but I don't believe it's honeybees. Well, there were more, and they were not touched. I hear around the municipality that he attacked a cow, a pig, but I don't believe it. My cows are here, calves, calves... They go up there where there are traps, he never got them".
And while saying goodbye to the guests, he takes binoculars and observes the forest above Katun, where, he says, he has seen a bear several times. And when he doesn't see it or doesn't come across the animal's track for days, he has no right:
"Something immediately worries me where he is".
It is estimated that we have 280 to 320 bears
Borko's capture is part of the action of the cross-border project "Bear in Mind", which CZIP implements with the NGO "Naše ptice" and the Association for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development "Naša Baština" from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The project was preceded by genetic research, during which CZIP experts collected bear excrement samples over three years and, based on the analysis, identified each individual. Based on that analysis, Perović estimates that the brown bear population in Montenegro today numbers between 280 and 320 individuals. There are no precise data. However, he says that this is not the most important thing.
"More important than that is the trend, whether the data from the field is the same or increasing, whether the population is stable or growing. If it is different, it is something to think about”.
Bonus video:
