Update from our brown bear conservation expedition in Dalarna, Sweden
Impacts on geography
Greetings from Sweden and the massive Siljan impact crater (assembly point yellow, base red arrow). Luckily, the meteorite impact was over 300 million years ago.
Today you can still see the ring it created and in it upturned sheer walls full of fossils of the early ocean that was there before the impact.
Impacts on brown bear conservation
But I digress from our main topic of brown bear conservation.
What we are interested in is new, not age-old impacts, particularly impacts on bears in Sweden and human-wildlife conflict. With bear hunting at an all-time high, we have our work cut out. We will tell you much more about this when you reach base camp here in the picture-perfect forest of Dalarna.
And of course we will also train you in the tools of the trade such as GPS, compass, datasheets, relascope (whatever that is, I hear you asking), navigating the roads, finding and checking bear dens and extracing lots of data from them and so much more.
Be prepared to learn lots in a short space of time and then applying all this new knowledge out in the field, where there is plenty of bear conservation work and research to be done.
Indeed, this is what many people like about our conservation expeditions: learning new things and applying them to help wildlife and wild places.
And, yes, setting up our expeditions is on schedule, the Biosphere Expeditions banner is up and we’ll be ready for you on Monday, when you all arrive on time at the assembly point in Mora .
The weather forecast, by the way, is here. Come prepared for all weathers.
See you on Monday. Safe travels to Mora.
Read also: First diary entry of the Sweden brown bear conservation expedition . All Sweden 2026 diary entries on one page.
Author: Matthias Hammer
Biosphere Expeditions was founded in 1999 by Dr. Matthias Hammer. Born in Germany, he went to school there, before joining the Army, and serving for several years amongst other units with the German Parachute Regiment. After active service he came to the UK and was educated at St Andrews, Oxford and Cambridge. During his time at university he either organised or was involved in the running of several expeditions, some of which were conservation expeditions (for example to the Brazil Amazon and Madagascar), whilst others were mountaineering/climbing expeditions (for example to the Russian Caucasus, the Alps or the Rocky Mountains). With Biosphere Expeditions he has led teams all over the globe. He is a qualified wilderness medical officer, ski instructor, mountain leader, divemaster and survival skills instructor. Once a rower on the international circuit, an amateur marathon runner and Ironman triathlete, he now enjoys less extreme pursuits such as writing and long-distance walks in the wild.