10.1.4 The SMART Way of Protecting, Monitoring, and Managing Human-Bear Conflict

Presentation Title: The SMART way of protecting, monitoring, and managing human – bear conflict
Summary: A primary goal of the Polar Bear Range States (PBRS) is to ensure the safe coexistence of polar bears and humans in the face of accelerating climate change. The PBRS recognize that human-polar bear interactions will increase in the future due to expanding human activities in the Arctic, and a continued increase in the number of bears on land due to retreating sea ice. In 2009, the PBRS agreed on the need to develop the Polar Bear-Human Information Management System (PBHIMS) to catalogue interactions in a more systematic and consistent manner. This system enables a data-based assessment of bear-human interactions and provides a scientific framework for preventing negative bear-human interactions in the future.

A current limitation of PBHIMS is that it is an ACCESS – based database with no mobile or web applications that allow for easy access restriction, data sharing and high maintenance costs. WWF and seven other conservation agencies have developed a Spatial Monitoring And Reporting Tool (SMART), which was developed to aide conservation managers in understanding wildlife population trends and threats to their survival including poaching and human -wildlife conflict (http://smartconservationtools.org/). Currently, SMART is being used in ~400 sites across the globe for effective conservation management, including entire national park systems and CITES monitoring tools. The advantage to SMART is that it is open-source software, can be web-based, allows for mobile data uploads via Smartphones and can be access controlled and a minimal annual cost. We will demonstrate the SMART software application for human- polar bear conflict monitoring using PBHIMS data from Alaska and illustrate how this tool could be useful to meet the established requirements that the PBRS conflict – working group has established for a joint database to be adopted by the HoD and range-wide human – bear conflict monitoring to be facilitated.