Sloth bear cubs were present at 82 attacks, of which 72 involved only one adult bear, presumably the mother that carried out the attack. Four attacks were by adult females and 28 by adult males. Only a small number of the victims could confirm the bears’ sex. Most attacks (i.e., 95%) involved just one adult bear, even if two or more adult bears were initially encountered. One such example is the North Bilaspur division in Chhattisgarh, India, where sloth bears commonly enter village compounds and raid crops (Bargali et al.2005).Ĭharacteristics and outcomes of sloth bear attacks, Sri Lanka Yet, in situations where habitat is greatly fragmented and degraded, bears may be forced into village compounds to survive. Reports from India confirm, also, that the principal form of human-sloth bear conflict is in the form of attacks on humans, and that most sloth bear attacks occur in forests (Rajpurohit & Krausman, 2000 Chauhan, 2006 Dhamorikar et al., 2017). We obtained no reports of bears entering village compounds to attack livestock or raid agricultural fields. Of 271 people attacked by bears, 98% were men who were mostly subsistence farmers but used local forests for fuel, bushmeat, and additional sources of income.Īll but three attacks occurred in forests remote from human settlements. Sloth bear attacks (1938-2004) per five-year interval as a function of rural human population size. Sloth bear attacks also increased exponentially with rural human population size, a likely result of encroachments into bear habitat and increased human activity in forests occupied by bears. Trends in sloth bear attacks in Sri Lankaīetween 19, sloth bear attacks in Sri Lanka doubled approximately every five years, increasing from 27 (1990–1994) to 44 (1995–1999) and to 91 (2000–2004). In this article, I review data on sloth bear attacks based on a study conducted in 2004 (Ratnayeke et al 2014), and propose ways to increase human safety in areas occupied by sloth bears. The tragic consequences of such encounters exemplify one of the most difficult challenges of conserving large dangerous species like the sloth bear. For sloth bears, theconsequences are also severe, because humans kill bears out offear, in self-defence, or in retaliation, and every bear attack erodes local support for their conservation (Chauhan, 2006 Ratnayeke et al.,2006). Sloth bear attacks have profound consequencesfor people. In South Asia, the root cause of conflict is the expansion of human populations into bear habitat (Can et al., 2014). Bears damage human property, kill livestock, and raid agricultural fields. (2014) reported 271 human casualties and three deaths from sloth bear attacks, with 226 of those records from 1980 to 2004.Ĭonflicts between bears and humans occur globally for a variety of reasons. The frequency of such attacks is lower in Sri Lanka Ratnayeke et al. (2005) reported a further 126 human casualties and 11 fatalities from sloth bear attacks in less than two years in the North Bilaspur forest division of Chhattisgarh. In a five-year period,Rajpurohit and Krausman (2000) reported 735 human casualties of sloth bear attacks in the Indian states of Madhyar Pradhesh and Chhattisgarh, 48 of which were fatal. Sloth bears lack the adaptations of a typical mammalian predator, yet are greatly feared among rural human communities and are responsible for more attacks on humans than any other species of bear (Can et al., 2014). In Sri Lanka, sloth bears range where sufficient areas of forest and scrubland remain in the dry zone lowlands (Ratnayeke et al. Reliable density estimates are unavailable, but the largest populations of sloth bears probably occur in the foothills of the Western Ghats and the Indian central highlands (Yoganand et al., 2006). Today, the vast majority of sloth bear range remains in India, where bears occupy suitable habitats throughout the peninsula and up to the Himalayan foothills, where the range overlaps with that of the Asiatic black bear, Ursus thibetanus (Johnsingh, 2003). The sloth bear has vanished from much of its former range and may no longer exist in Bangladesh. The one subspecies, Melursus u r s i n u s i n o r n a t u s, is found in Sri Lanka (Pocock, 1941). Sloth bears, M e l u rs u s u r s i n u s, evolved in the Indian subtropics and were once widespread in the lowlands of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |