Vulnerable sloth bears are attracted to human food waste: a novel situation in Mount Abu town, India UTKAR SH P RA J A PA T I,VIJA Y KUMAR KOL I and K. S . GOPI SUNDAR


Abstract Human–carnivore interactions are on the rise globally, and often take the form of damage to property and livelihoods, human injuries or fatalities, and retaliatory killing of carnivores. Potential conflict situations are rarely recognized early, and circumstances are often complicated by mismatches between people’s perceptions and reality. Following media reports of sloth bear Melursus ursinus attacks on people, we evaluated the situation in a tourism- dominated town in southern Rajasthan, India. Using a spa- tially explicit survey design, we interviewed 241 residents of Mount Abu to record recent bear sightings and attacks, prevailing attitudes towards bears, and respondents’ un- derstanding of bear ecology. We obtained independent secondary information on tourism levels and bear attacks to verify information received during interviews. We used recursive partitioning to identify factors that explained res- idents’ attitudes towards sloth bears, and multi-model in- ference to identify land cover and other features that influ- enced bear presence. Respondents perceived increasing bear presence and attacks, and secondary data supported these perceptions. Respondents’ insights regarding bear ecology, particularly bears being attracted by rubbish bins, were sup- ported by multi-model inferences. Mount Abu’s residents, especially women and younger men, had negative attitudes towards bears, independent of their education level or oc- cupation. Our findings suggest a novel situation in Mount Abu, with sloth bears habitually accessing rubbish bins, which leads to increased bear–human interactions and negative attitudes among residents. We recommend imme- diate action focusing on waste management, which could help prevent an escalation of the situation and reduce at- tacks by bears that could otherwise lead to retaliatory killings.


Keywords Attitudes, human–carnivore conflict, Melursus ursinus, Mount Abu, Rajasthan, recursive partitioning, sloth bear, waste management


UTKARSH PRAJAPATI ( orcid.org/0000-0001-5744-5578) Wildlife Research


Laboratory, Department of Zoology, University College of Science, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India


VIJAY KUMAR KOLI ( orcid.org/0000-0003-3264-9253) Wildlife Research


Laboratory, Department of Zoology, University College of Science, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Rajasthan, India


K. S. GOPI SUNDAR (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0003-3477-5691)


Nature Conservation Foundation, 1311, ‘Amritha’, 12th Main, Vijayanagar 1st Stage, Mysuru 570017, Karnataka, India. E-mail gopi@ncf-india.com


Received 9 August 2019. Revision requested 9 December 2019. Accepted 25 March 2020. First published online 15 March 2021.


Supplementary material for this article is available at doi.org/10.1017/S0030605320000216


Introduction


question ‘What factors shape (in)tolerance of the presence and activities of wild animals, especially where those ani- mals induce human–wildlife conflict?’ (Sutherland et al., 2009). As framed, the question made it clear that not only the characteristics of so-called human–wildlife conflict are important, but also the identification of conditions and ani- mal behaviour that lead to such situations. Globally, many studies have since examined human–carnivore interactions, to identify aspects that can help reduce or eliminate nega- tive interactions (Nyhus, 2016). Carnivores dominate in the global literature on interactions of people and wildlife, and mitigation is becoming increasingly urgent (Inskip & Zimmermann, 2009; Nyhus, 2016). This urgency is fuelled by damage to property, human injuries and fatalities, and retaliatory killings of species of global conservation concern (Karanth & Madhusudan, 2002; Treves et al., 2006). Iden- tification of the conditions that lead to negative interactions is often confounded by a mismatch between people’s per- ceptions and the actual ecology and behaviour of wildlife species, and by socio-cultural aspects of conflict situa- tions (Suryawanshi et al., 2013; Anand & Radhakrishna, 2017; Karanth et al., 2019). The problem of potentially mis- matched perceptions and realities is not easy to solve be- cause most studies utilize questionnaire surveys of people living near, or experiencing interactions with, carnivores, thus relying extensively on people’s perceptions (Treves et al., 2006; Kansky & Knight, 2014). In addition, there is a paucity of studies in areas where most people are affected by negative interactions with wildlife, and on the species most frequently involved in such situations (Can et al., 2014; Anand & Radhakrishna, 2017). Bears have a global distribution, with multiple species involved in negative in- teractions with people, thus providing an opportunity to address this issue (Can et al., 2014). Bears occur on all four major continents, but literature


T


on their ecology and interactions with humans focuses pri- marily on two North American species (the American black bear Ursus americanus and the brown bear Ursus arctos; Can et al., 2014). In India, the sloth bear Melursus ursinus,


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work. Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 699–707 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000216


he first global assessment of the 100 most important questions for biodiversity conservation included the


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164