Brown bears in Finland
The Brown Bear is the the national symbol of Finland. Some 1,000 bears are estimated to live in Finland. There are excellent opportunities to see bears in Finland. Read more here
See also
The Finnish online service Bearcam allows you to admire brown bears in from the taiga forest in Eastern Finland, near the Russian border.
The Bearcam is installed in the animal observation site of the Wild Brown Bear Company, which arranges animal-watching tours. In tests last summer, the webcam system which films live feeds showed a 95 percent probability of capturing the bears on film. Although brown bears are classified as near threatened in many European countries, the taiga forests in Eastern Finland are home to a large number of them.
Bearcam feeds live videos between 6 pm and 6 am daily. Daytime visitors of the website can browse the video archive. The evergreen taiga forest provides possibilities for guided trips during which one can admire rare wildlife, in particular bears and wolverines.
In Finland there are currently about 800 to 900 brown bears and they distributed allover the country. Despite this, population density varies and is still rather low in western and southern Finland. Core area of the Finnish population is in the southeast of the country. At the beginning of the 20th century the brown bear nearly disappeared from northern Europe and the Finnish population reached its minimum around 1920. Afterwards the population started to grow again, first slowly, then with acceleration since the 1970s. The immigration of brown bears from Russia has been scientifically revealed for the first time then and dispersion to the southern and western parts of the country has been observed since then.
Brown Bear Watching in Finland
The Finnish population is estimated at around 1000 individuals, but despite this low figure it is still hunted. Without reinforcements from behind the Russian border, Finnish bears would long since have been hunted to extinction. Most bruins live in the large wilderness areas on the Russian side of the Finnish border. When the hunting season starts, many move back to the quieter Russian back country only to return in spring after hibernation.
Watching and photographing bears in Finland is possible. A good time is from the middle of April to the beginning of June when the bears have just awoken from their winter sleep. After this comes the rut, when eating is not the animals’ main concern. The best viewing time lasts from the beginning of July to the middle of August, when feeding points again have plenty of bears to watch and photograph.
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