WORLD SLOTH BEAR DAY

Description

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Context: The first World Sloth Bear Day was observed on October 12 to generate awareness and strengthen conservation efforts around the unique bear species endemic to the Indian subcontinent.

Details:

Classified as “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List, sloth bears are endemic to the Indian sub-continent and 90% of the species population is found in India.
A proposal for observing World Sloth Bear Day was mooted by Wildlife SOS India, an organisation involved in sloth bear conservation and protection for over two decades and the IUCN-Species Survival Commission sloth bear expert team accepted the proposal and declared the day to be celebrated worldwide.
Listed under Schedule I of the (Wildlife Protection) Act of India, 1972, the species has the same level of protection as tigers, rhinos and elephants.
A press statement issued by Wildlife SOS said the organisation rescued and rehabilitated over hundreds of “performing dancing bears, thereby resolving a 400-year-old barbaric tradition (of dancing bears) while also providing alternative livelihoods to the nomadic Kalandar community members”.
Sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) were omnivorous and survived on termites, ants and fruits.
Over the past few years there has been a rise of incidents of human sloth bear conflict in States like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra among other states.
Habitation:
It mostly occurs in areas with forest cover, low hills bordering the outer range of the Himalayas from Punjab to Arunachal Pradesh.
It is absent in the high mountainsof Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, and a broad unforested swath in the south.