Assessing the recovery and conservation status of threatened species usually depends on the precision of population estimates of target species (Skalski et al. 2005). Bears present a challenge for estimating abundance because of their elusive behavior (Garshelis 2006). Generally, markrecapture techniques offer a powerful method for estimating abundance. Population estimates of bears have mostly been conducted by using mark-recapture with radio-collared animals (Garshelis et al. 1999), camera trapping re-sighting of bears marked with ear tags , and DNA-hair analysis (Boulanger et al. 2004). Recently, facial and pelage patterns of Andean bears have been used as unique marks to estimate bear abundance (Rios-Uzeda et al. 2007).
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