Efforts to protect Greece’s brown bears are starting to pay off, according to a study by the bear conservation group Arcturos unveiled on Thursday. This shows that the country’s bear population has made a slight recovery and is both numerically and genetically more robust, ANA reports.
The group’s study used hair samples collected over a period of three years, which had been caught in electricity poles that the bears use as scratching posts. The hairs underwent DNA analysis and the results of more than 3,000 samples were published in the latest edition of the periodical “Heredity”.
The new methodology allowed Arcturos to identify more than 250 bears between 2007 and 2010 and four genetically distinct populations in Rodopi, Vitsi, Varnounda and Pindos. A later Arcturos study in 2015 calculated that the bear population of Greece numbers at least 450 individuals.
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