Conservation of Brown bears (Ursus arctos) by preserving the Persian oak forests

The mountain forest region of Zagros in west of Iran is one of the most important habitats for brown bear. The brown bear in Iran is declared as a protected species. This study aims to map areas of brown bears occurrence and present a descriptive relationship between the spatial distributions of brown bears and different types of land cover-use in the province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahamd located in southern Zagros. Data collection was accomplished from the Mid-September to the end of 2018. The snowball sampling method was used to find the interviewees who were aware about the presence of brown bears in different parts of the province. Survey respondents were given a detailed large-scale map of the province to mark the locations of their brown bear observations. The marked points were transferred to a GIS map and were buffered with home range sizes of adult brown bears (female and male) from a similar region to generate a map of relative high and low density of the presence of the brown bears. Overlying the created density map with the land cover- use map and the map of the Protected Areas (PAs) shows that the territory of the bears comprise about 38% of the total area of the province. Only about 20% of the territory is located within the PAs. Woodland and low-density forests cover about 99.8% and 50% of the territory of the bears in PAs and areas out of PAs, respectively.