Food waste and sloth bears in India 705
(Debata et al., 2017; Dhamorikar et al., 2017). Past studies in- cluded interviews with people dependent on forest produce whose activities overlapped with peak activity times of sloth bears, leading to increased interactions (Joshi et al., 1999; Yoganand et al., 2005). InMountAbu, residents reported en- countering bears when they returned home from work. That women have more negative attitudes towards sloth bears has previously been associated with their role as the pri- mary collectors of forest produce (Dharaiya et al., 2016). In Mount Abu all women interviewed were home-makers and their attitudes probably resulted from concern for their fa- mily’s safety, which is common in communities that experi- ence continuous bear presence (Røskaft et al., 2007). Older men had more positive attitudes towards bears, possibly because they were more used to bear presence (Johansson et al., 2016). Our analyses show that the reasons underlying residents’ attitudes towards sloth bears in Mount Abu are complex, but will nevertheless help identify groups of peo- ple whose participation will be key in planning to reduce negative interactions. InMountAbu education level did not affect attitudes,with
uneducated residents having similar attitudes to people with various levels of education (Supplementary Fig. 2). This is similar to other areas with conflict situations where edu- cation does not significantly influence attitudes (Baruch- Mordo et al., 2011). There is, however, increasing evidence that planned environmental education can help improve people’s attitudes towards bears (Baruch-Mordo et al., 2011; Espinosa & Jacobson, 2012).We propose that such education programmes be developed and implemented inMount Abu to help reduce bear attacks on people and to ensure that negative attitudes do not escalate into retaliatory action.
The utility of secondary data
We were unable to obtain adequate data for analysis of spa- tial factors associated with bear attacks on people, but visua- lizations suggest that roads are an important factor (Fig. 1). Both respondents’ views and secondary information sug- gested that bear attacks, although probably increasing, are not at levels where residents or authorities are alarmed. Secondary information showed that bear attacks occurred with similar frequency across all seasons, suggesting that sloth bears occur in Mount Abu throughout the year. In contrast, sloth bear attacks inside protected areas have strong seasonal biases associated with food availability and human use of forest areas (e.g. Bargali et al., 2005; Singh et al., 2018). In areas with increased human activity and habitat disturbance, such as along narrow habitat corridors, bear attacks did not have a seasonal bias, probably because of continued interactions with humans (Dhamorikar et al., 2017). This is similar to the situation in Mount Abu, except that the situation is reversed, with bears entering the town rather than humans entering bear habitat. Awareness
programmes aiming to minimize bear–human interactions along roads during the late evening and night could help limit injuries to people, particularly as respondents indi- cated that attacks happened in the context of chance en- counters that surprised the bears.
Factors influencing bear sightings inside Mount Abu
Respondents linked bear sightings to availability of rubbish rather than to other potential factors, and generalized ad- ditive modelling, which included several variables that re- spondents did not mention, also independently identified rubbish bins as primary attractants to bears (Table 1). Our analyses indicate that the response variables chosen, al- though novel in the study of sloth bear ecology, helped ex- plain variations in the number of bear sightings at grid-cell level. There is growing interest in using empirically defen- sible methods to evaluate factors affecting the use of land- scapes by sloth bears (Srivastha et al., 2017), and our study adds to this sparse literature. Respondents almost unequivocally suggested that food
waste from hotels catering to the tourism industry attracted bears into the city. Respondents also indicated that sloth bears searched for sweet foods, similar to their habit in the wild where they seek out sugar-rich foods (e.g. honey and ripe fruits; Yoganand et al., 2013). Multiple lines of evi- dence showed accessible rubbish to be the primary attract- ant for sloth bears in Mount Abu. Sloth bears in the wild adapt to changing conditions by shifting to different foods (Joshi et al., 1997; Yoganand et al., 2005), but our study pro- vides the only known instance of this species foraging for human-generated rubbish within an urban area. Bears can become dependent on rubbish and may modify their behav- iour in a way that can exacerbate conflict situations (Breck et al., 2009; Cozzi et al., 2016). It is therefore vital that a long- term solution to waste disposal in Mount Abu is found, to help alleviate, or resolve, the increasing negative interactions between people and bears. Bear-proof rubbish containers could be an effective solution and have been shown to re- duce the intensity of conflict situations elsewhere (Johnson et al., 2018).
Conservation implications
Our findings show the residents ofMount Abu to be reliable informants who are knowledgeable about sloth bear ecology and behaviour. They are thus likely to be attentive partici- pants in conservation actions to help alleviate this potential- ly escalating conflict. We excluded hoteliers as respondents because the majority of owners were not residents ofMount Abu town, but some of the respondents worked in hotels and resorts. However, hotels are a primary stakeholder given the impact of tourism-generated rubbish. Any waste
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
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
