Asiatic black bear (ursus thibetanus) activity pattern and human-black bear conflict in the nanda devi biosphere reserve, western Himalaya, India

Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus)-human conflicts and its activity in buffer and transition zone of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve (NDBR), Uttarakhand, India was assessed, based on semi-structured interviews with villagers during 2016–2018. The 65% of villagers depended on forest products and 80% crop depredation was by black bear agricultural field situated near to bear habitat. The three types of black bear-human conflicts recorded from NDBR were crop depredation, livestock depredation and attacks on humans. From these crop depredations (80%), most of the crop depredations were on maize (91%) in agricultural crops and apple (88%) in orchard crop. Maximum observations were recorded for prematurity stage (69.23%) and followed by maturity stage (23.08%). A total of 82 cases of attacks by black bear on livestock were reported, of these, 57 (49 on cattle and 8 on sheep/goat) were killed in the night shelters, 16 were killed in the forest while grazing. The 24 attacks were on humans, out of them mauling was 87% and rest were killed and maximum attacks were in autumn season (62.50%), dawn and dusk time (58.33%), in agricultural fields (58.33%), on head and face (37.50%) of body. The improvement in traditional crop protection measures, improvement in night shelters and proper disposal of home waste material and regular monitoring of high conflict zone with wildlife management team is recommended. These protection measures will improve problem with black bears and to get in local villagers support for black bear conservation.