'Dependable dog near home', depend near ... road

Increasingly, pregnant North American elk live closer to the road, where people pass by. Why? An interesting study showed that they did so to give birth away from hungry bears.

Joel Berger from the American Nature Conservancy said his team found the elk "enlightened" that roads that provide relatively safe space for their newborn children, and that these Protected areas have changed the behavior of animals in ways that people do not expect.

Female deer have more and more life near the road.(Photo: smithsmith)

For 10 years, since 1995, Berger and colleagues tracked the deer in and around Grand Teton National Park in northwest Wyoming, USA. Each year, they set up radio transmitters on 18-25 female deer, and about three-quarters of them are usually pregnant. They also monitor their behavior by tracking on the ground.

As the years went by, the team found a strange trend: "The deer have elected to give birth more and more near the road," which they did not expect. Berger believes that this trend reflects the grizzly bear's resurgence in Yellowstone National Park, a few kilometers north of it.

Studies in Alaska show that grizzly bears are the main culprit of 90% of the deer's deaths, and that the elk often stay away from the area where the bear was born, especially if it ever lost a baby. It is important that bears often do not dare to approach roads, averaging at least 500 meters away.

In places where bears are present regularly, the mother deer is closer to the road, averaging 122 meters per year, even having a baby born only 50 meters from the main road.

However, Berger believes that this "safe buffer" will not last long, because "if you are a hungry bear, why don't you come to feed on the road?"

T. An