Conflict bear translocation: investigating population genetics and fate of bear translocation in Dachigam National Park, Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Mukesh Mukesh,Lalit Kumar Sharma,Samina Amin Charoo,Sambandam Sathyakumar,Bi-Song Yue

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132005

Mukesh Mukesh, Lalit Kumar Sharma + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132005

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Abstract

The Asiatic black bear population in Dachigam landscape, Jammu and Kashmir is well recognized as one of the highest density bear populations in India. Increasing incidences of bear-human interactions and the resultant retaliatory killings by locals have become a serious threat to the survivorship of black bears in the Dachigam landscape. The Department of Wildlife Protection in Jammu and Kashmir has been translocating bears involved in conflicts, henceforth ‘conflict bears’ from different sites in Dachigam landscape to Dachigam National Park as a flagship activity to mitigate conflicts. We undertook this study to investigate the population genetics and the fate of bear translocation in Dachigam National Park. We identified 109 unique genotypes in an area of ca. 650 km2 and observed bear population under panmixia that showed sound genetic variability. Molecular tracking of translocated bears revealed that mostly bears (7 out of 11 bears) returned to their capture sites, possibly due to homing instincts or habituation to the high quality food available in agricultural croplands and orchards, while only four bears remained in Dachigam National Park after translocation. Results indicated that translocation success was most likely to be season dependent as bears translocated during spring and late autumn returned to their capture sites, perhaps due to the scarcity of food inside Dachigam National Park while bears translocated in summer remained in Dachigam National Park due to availability of surplus food resources. Thus, the current management practices of translocating conflict bears, without taking into account spatio-temporal variability of food resources in Dachigam landscape seemed to be ineffective in mitigating conflicts on a long-term basis. However, the study highlighted the importance of molecular tracking of bears to understand their movement patterns and socio-biology in tough terrains like Dachigam landscape.

Highlights

In India, the Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) is distributed in the forested habitats of the Himalayas and hills of northeastern States covering an area of about 270,000 km2 with an estimated population of 5,400 to 6,700 individuals [1, 2, 3]
The ability of black bear to survive and negotiate man-made habitats such as plantations, orchards, cultivated areas, scrublands, and even villages to move between forested areas has resulted in its continuous distribution and led to increasing bear-human conflicts [2].The Dachigam landscape (DL) falls in the central wildlife division of Kashmir region in the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India possess a mosaic of Protected Areas such as Dachigam National Park (DNP), City Forest National Park, Over-Aru Wildlife Sanctuary (WS), Thajwas WS and 10 Conservation Reserves viz., Brian-Nishat, Dara, Khonmoh, Khrew, Khiram, Shikargah, Wangat, Khangund, Panyer, Hajin along with croplands and human habitations placed in between forest patches [3]
We established a molecular system for individual identification of free ranging Asiatic black bears using wild caught hair samples

Summary

Introduction

In India, the Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) is distributed in the forested habitats of the Himalayas and hills of northeastern States covering an area of about 270,000 km with an estimated population of 5,400 to 6,700 individuals [1, 2, 3]. The bear population in this landscape is recognized as one of the highest density populations of the Asiatic black bear in India [1]. This population is threatened due to retaliatory killings as a consequence of increasing incidences of bear-human conflicts [4] and due to conversion of forested habitats to other land use types [5]. Several studies have reported the tendency of the translocated animals to return homeward from large distances e.g. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) from 560 km distance [12], polar bear (Ursus maritimus) from 480 km distance [13], black bear (Ursus americanus) from 229 km distance [8, 14, 15], Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) from 100 km distance [16]

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