Alberta has suspended its annual spring grizzly bear hunt for three years while the province attempts to estimate the exact number of bears in the province.

It's generally believed there are about 700 grizzlies in the province, although the figure is disputed.

Sustainable Resources Development Minister David Coutts said Alberta is taking "the most precautionary approach possible" while trying to measure the population, but rejected declaring the bears a threatened species.

Grizzly bear

The province's own grizzly experts recently concluded the population was too fragile to allow the hunt to continue.

Chuck Schwartz from Montana State University and Christopher Servheen from the University of Montana, will provide scientific peer review of the government's plan for the bears.

Their information will be used by the province's recovery team to prepare final recommendations to the minister.

Both scientists were instrumental in increasing bear populations in the famed U.S. Yellowstone Park, an Alberta release said.

Alberta issued 73 grizzly licences in 2005. Ten bears were killed in the hunt, and another 12 were killed in other circumstances, including two "problem bears," two shot illegally and two killed in self defence.

Conservationists wanted the hunt stopped because Alberta's grizzly population is shrinking, but the Alberta Fish and Game Association favours a modest hunt to deal with "problem bears."

The government will put more money into research and public safety programs while the hunt is suspended.

The bear census involves setting up bait near a piece of barbed wire The wire snags a hair sample used for DNA analysis.

Alberta's growing population and development near wildlife corridors has led to more and increasingly dangerous encounters with bears.

• FROM JUNE 6, 2005: Woman killed in bear attack in Alberta

Last summer, a grizzly that had been moved out of the area a week earlier killed a woman near Canmore.