Brown Bear ( <scp> <i>Ursus arctos</i> </scp> ) Field Sign Monitoring for 40 Years (1976–2015) in Northern Hokkaido, Japan, During a Wildlife Management Policy Shift

ABSTRACT Large carnivore population shifts often reflect changes in management policies or environmental dynamics. However, assessing the effects of such factors over the long term is often challenging due to the scarcity of long‐term monitoring data. This paper presents a dataset from long‐term field sign monitoring of brown bears ( Ursus arctos ) conducted from 1976 to 2015 in the Teshio Experimental Forest (TEF), Hokkaido University, northern Hokkaido, Japan. Monitoring was conducted annually between July and August. Survey routes were established along streams and forest roads to ensure comprehensive spatial coverage of the TEF, and observers recorded brown bear field signs, namely, feeding signs, tracks, and scats. The original records, comprising spatial information and descriptions of survey routes and field signs in document‐based formats, were digitized into ESRI shapefile format. The resulting dataset comprises 2421 field sign records (1145 feeding signs, 964 tracks, and 312 scats) collected along 9890 km of survey routes over the monitoring period, involving approximately 3400 person‐days of effort. This dataset spans periods before and after the abolishment of the Spring Bear‐culling Program, which aimed to reduce human–bear conflicts and ended in April 1990. The spatiotemporal information and detailed field sign records, including footprint sizes and scat contents, provide key insights into long‐term trends in population dynamics, habitat selection, and feeding behavior in relation to shifts in wildlife management policy and environmental dynamics. The detailed Metadata for this abstract is available in MetaCat in JaLTER at https://doi.org/10.20783/DIAS.JLE.94 , and the complete dataset is available at https://figshare.com/s/2c0e0f86df5e63fc51a6 .