They seem to have no altitudinal preferences and have been recorded from sea level to an elevation of (the latter in the Himalayas). In most of their range, brown bears generally seem to prefer semiopen country, with a scattering of vegetation that can allow them a resting spot during the day. However, they have been recorded as inhabiting every variety of northern temperate forest known to occur. North American brown bears, or grizzly bears, generally seem to prefer open or semi-open landscapes, with the species once having been common on the Great Plains and continues to occur in sizeable numbers in tundra and coastal estuaries and islands. Variable numbers still occur in prairie areas of the northern Rocky Mountains (mostly in Canada but some in the contiguous United States). In western Eurasia, they inhabit mostly mountainous woodlands, in ranges such as the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Caucasus, though they may have been driven into more wooded, precipitous habitats due to the prior extensive persecution of the species in some regions. Desolate parts of northern and eastern Europe, like large patches of Scandinavia and the Carpathian Mountains, have always been quite heavily forested and have maintained relatively stable populations of bears, indicating that the brown bears here are well-adapted to forest-dwelling. In Central Asia, human disturbances are minimal as this area has a harsher environment and is more sparsely populated. In this part of the world, bears may be found in steppe, alpine meadows and even desert edge. In Siberia, the species seems well-adapted to living in denser pine forests. Eastern Russian forests hold arguably the largest number of brown bears in the world outside of possibly Alaska and northeastern Canada. It is thought the Eurasian bears which colonized America were tundra-adapted and the species is sometimes found around sub-Arctic ice fields. This is indicated by brown bears in the Chukotka Peninsula on the Asian side of Bering Strait, which are the only Asian brown bears to live year-round in lowland tundra like their North American cousins.