Native Asiatic black bear may exist here

Two Asiatic black bear cubs, born to a female from Russia, sleep several days after their birth on Mt. Jiri, South Gyeongsang Province, in January last year, in this file photo. The Korea National Park Service said their parental line includes a native Korean bear. / Yonhap

By Kim Rahn

An Asiatic black bear cub born on Mt. Jiri of South Gyeongsang Province last winter likely has a mother from Russia and a native Korean father, according to the Korea National Park Service (KNPS), Wednesday.

Officials from the agency suspect native wild Asiatic black bears still exist on the mountain, while the agency has brought in bears from Russia and other nations and released them in an effort to increase the numbers of the endangered species.

The KNPS said that through blood, hair and excrement samples, they examined the DNA of 47 bears which were released by the agency or born here since 2004 when the species restoration project started. They found the parental line of one of the cubs was actually native to the area.

“The cub was born in January last year to a mother bear from Russia that was released here in 2005. Another cub, which was born to the mother at the same time, had a parental line of another Russian male,” an official said.

They suspect the mother mated both with a Russian and a native Korean bear in the summer of 2011 and became pregnant with two cubs from the different males. There have been similar cases in other countries, where a female bear mates with more than one male and has two or more offspring at a time with different fathers.

“We see a high chance of the native breed’s existence. The area where the mother bear and the cub usually stay is where we suspect the native bears inhabit,” the official said.

Some animal farms brought Asiatic black bears from Japan or Taiwan before 1985, when Korea banned imports of the species, and their offspring have lived here, but the cub’s DNA was also different from theirs, he added.

In early 2000 before the species restoration project began, some Asiatic black bears were shown in surveillance camera footage on Mt. Jiri. There were also claw prints from the bears climbing trees.

However, the agency concluded at that time that a maximum of five native bears were living on the mountain, presuming they would be extinct within 20-30 years. It started the project to combat this.