Across the Western Himalayas, Himalayan Brown Bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) and Himalayan Black Bears (Ursus thibetanus), live in proximity with people. These people, many of whom are from various indigenous and tribal groups, are primarily either transhumant pastoralist (eg. the Bakerwals and Gaddis) or agriculturalist (primarily horticulturalists cultivating fruit like apples). This proximity of bears with people is increasingly being augmented by climate change which is altering cropping patterns and habitat loss. This is leading to increased negative human-bear interactions which include, but aren’t limited to, increased raiding of crops by bears and depredation of livestock. Most of which is met with retaliatory killing of bears. If the financial impacts of livelihood loss by bears isn’t adequately mitigated, the illegal retaliatory killing of bears can also lead to engagement in illegal trade of bear parts.

Besides this, direct poaching of bears for their gall bladder is a huge conservation challenge, but often under the shadow of welfare and bear-human conflict issues. All of these conservation threats to bears are spatially explicit, hence in collaboration with Dr. Hinsley, the team aims to identify spatially-explicit priorities for bear conservation across the Western Indian Himalayas.

Based on this baseline information, the team also aims to operationalize a local champions network in one region to actively work towards human-bear conservation interventions to ensure bear conservation while protecting people’s livelihoods.

Bears in Mind supports the project since 2024.