Bear awareness week!
The bear population is declining. Not just the giant pandas but also polar bears and the Asiatic black bears. While poaching, although illegal in most countries, is one of the major reasons, loss of natural habitat is another compelling cause for endangering the bear populations. May 16th to May 21st is World Bear Awareness Week and we take this opportunity to highlight some conservation efforts.
We have all heard the heart-wrenching story narrated by National Geographic photographer, Paul Nicklen about a starving polar bear. The photographers spotted a thin bear searching for food in drums on one of the Canadian Arctic islands. It didn’t find any and later swam away. This was in 2017, but the photograph is still very impactful. It enforced the conversation on climate change- how the thinning of ice sheets impacted the polar bear habitat- and gave rise to the predictions of more starvation events in the near future that could cause polar bears to enter human territories.
That prediction might be already happening. Another photo, also by Paul Nicklen, which inspired the cover painting of this article, shows a female bear peeking into a cabin in Svalbard. Recently, a Russian photographer, Dmitri Kokh, traveled to the far Eastern end of the Russian Arctic only to find an abandoned village now inhabited by polar bears.
.As fascinating as this looks, it sheds light on the increasing human-bear conflicts. Bears (Ursidae) are generally omnivorous, which means they eat almost everything. This behavior of black and brown bears can prove a nuisance to livestock, crops, and beehives. On one end there lies a challenge to restrict human-bear conflicts by practical interventions and on the other the efforts to protect the bear population.
To assist the latter, one effort is to recolonize the brown bear population in the Alps and Dinaric mountains of Central Europe. These populations are small and easy to manage and study. An interesting insight has been observed in the adaptive behavior of these large mammals depending on their proximity to human-dominated areas in these regions. For instance, bears living in highly humanized landscapes, selected habitats where they could easily find refuge.
While killing bears is illegal in most countries, some (like Slovenia and North America) allow it in order to maintain the bear population. Although most Norwegians are against it, Norway still permits the commercial trade of polar bears and their fur. This leads to the killing of around 800-1000 polar bears annually! Illegal poaching of Asiatic black bears is also similar and a big problem in North-east India. The poachers kill the mothers and often leave cubs, lost and unprotected. In 2003, the Center for Bear Rehabilitation and Conservation (CBRC) was established in Arunachal Pradesh to take care of the orphaned cubs and provide training on the useful skills to survive in the wild.
It seems a lot of conservation efforts might involve a close association of bears with humans. The next challenge for conservation scientists is how to guarantee a peaceful coexistence.
Sources:
Cristina Mittermeier,’ Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer recalls what went wrong’, National Geographic, August 2018 Issue.
Khorozyan, I. & Waltert, M. Variation and conservation implications of the effectiveness of anti-bear interventions. Sci. Rep. 10, 15341 (2020).
Recio, M. R. et al. Context-dependent behaviour and connectivity of recolonizing brown bear populations identify transboundary conservation challenges in Central Europe. Anim. Conserv. 24, 73–83 (2021).