The grizzly bear population at Yellowstone National Park has increased 4-fold over a 25-year period with no loss in genetic diversity, according to a new report.
The results strongly suggest that Yellowstone grizzly bears, Ursus arctos ssp., are well on their way to a near full recovery after a huge population drop was reported in the early 1980s. The report, published in Molecular Ecology, represents a collaborative effort between the USGS, Wildlife Genetics International, the University of Montana, and the federal, state and tribal partners of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
"We already knew the grizzly bear population had been growing since the mid 1980s from our demographic analyses," team leader Frank van Manen, a USGS wildlife biologist, told Discovery News.
He added, "This study demonstrated that, in parallel with demographic growth, the effective population size (i.e. the number of individuals contributing genes to the next generation) increased as well."
Lead author Pauline Kamath, also from the USGS, echoed that good news, saying that the findings about genetic diversity are a key "indicator of a population's ability to respond to future environmental change."
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