Certificate - Etheses - Saurashtra University

sloth bear-human conflicts from 23 forest divisions and protected areas of Madhya
Pradesh showed that 607 human casualties occurred in the state during 1989-1994
(Chauhan and Rajpurohit, 1996 and Rajpurohit and Krausman, 2000). In Andhra
Pradesh, 20-30 mauling cases by sloth bears were reported in different years (Krishna
Raju et al., 1987). In other countries also, bears have been reported to cause extensive
damage to agricultural crops (Peyton, 1980; Vaughan et al., 1989; Servheen, 1990;
Conover and Decker, 1991; Reid et al., 1991 and Stowell and Willing, 1992).
In recent years, human-bears conflicts have been found on the increase at the interface of
wildlife habitats and human use dominated landscapes. These problems have adversely
affected the local rural economy and thus acceptance of conservation ideals by the local
people has been also greatly affected. Though improvement in agricultural technology
and practices and rural community development, and integrated forest management
practices have been in progress in these areas, these measures alone would not help
reduce the above conflicts. Under the circumstances, situation for both wildlife and rural
people is rather tragic especially in the protected areas.
In Kugti wildlife sanctuary, migratory shepherds, villagers and brown bear conflicts
have been a serious problem. Reports of livestock killing by brown bears and
occasional attacks on humans have been fairly common in the north western and
trans-Himalayan regions. Thus brown bears in India have been threatened largely due
to killing by migratory graziers and local communities to reduce livestock
depredation. Mitigation of human-brown bear conflicts in hilly areas is very complicated
and therefore, scientists and wildlife managers are facing challenging situation.
However, there is an urgent need to study the nature and extent of the conflicts to
114