Forest National Bear Conservation amd Welfare Action plan

Ministry of Environment and
Forests National Bear
Conservation and
Welfare Action Plan
The Minister for
Environment and
Forests, Smt. Jayanthi
Natarajan has
released the National
Bear Conservation
and Welfare Action
Plan.
India is home to four
of the eight species of
bears found
worldwide – making it
one of the only two
countries with this
diversity, the other
being China.
The Indian bears
include the sloth bear
(Melursus ursinus),
the Asiatic black bear
(Ursus thibetanus),
the Himalayan brown
bear (Ursus arctos)
and the Malayan sun
bear (Helarctos
malayanus). Sloth
bears are endemic to
the Indian sub-
continent and have
gone extinct fairly
recently from
Pakistan and
Bangladesh,
underscoring the
threats to the species
of habitat loss and
increasing human
interface. The black
bears and brown
bears inhabit the
Himalayan and sub-
Himalayan regions,
while the sun bears
are found in very
small numbers along
the northeast Indian
border. The bears
have an almost pan-
India distribution,
being found in 26 of
the 28 Indian states.
The national plan
summarises the
threats faced by bears
in India, and outlines
management actions
to be undertaken by
the bear range states
for their conservation
and welfare. It was
an outcome of over a
year of collaborative
work by the MoEF,
WII, state Forest
Departments and
NGOs including WTI,
WSPA and IFAW.