Escaping Neobiota: Habitat use and avoidance by sloth bears in Jessore Sloth bear Sanctuary India

• Published in: Trees, Forests and People (Online) Forests and People (Online), 2023-09, Vol.13, p.100400, Article 100400
• Main Authors: Rot, Jignesh, Jangid, Ashish Kumar, Singh, Chandra Prakash, Dharaiya, Nishith A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Habitat usage; Logistic model; Melursus ursinus; Prosopis juliflora; Western India
• ISSN: 2666-7193; 2666-7193
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tfp.2023.100400

•Sloth bears avoid the Prosopis juliflora infested areas.•High elevation, more undulations dominated by dense forest and open scrub can characterize the sloth bear habitat in Jessore.•Human-sloth bear encounter probability is high in summer and winter in Jessore Sloth bear Sanctuary. Global terrestrial ecosystem is threatened by several factors, such as infestation of invasive plants, which influence the habitat use by wildlife. Prosopis juliflora is such a plant species, sprawled over arid and semiarid ecosystems in India. Under this study, we assumed that intensification of P. juliflora negatively affects the habitat used by sloth bears Melursus ursinus, along with geographical, ecological and anthropogenic predictors in Jessore Sloth bear Sanctuary, Gujarat, India. To inquire so, we conducted sign surveys (1 km trail length in each grid) in three seasons, i.e., winter, summer and monsoon. Further, the presence/absence of species’ signs was logistically modelled with elevation, terrain ruggedness, area proportions of dense forest, open scrub, P. juliflora infested area and human encroachment with respect to the seasons. We found that the area proportion of P. juliflora negatively affects habitat use by sloth bears, while elevation, terrain ruggedness, and area proportions of dense forest and open scrub positively trigger. The proportion of encroachment varied between the seasons. Further, we inferred the human-sloth bear encounter probability from the seasonal models. During summer, followed by winter, we evidenced the relatively high probability of bear occurrence around settlements, which can be advocated by the availability of food items around villages. The current study supports the prescribed ecology of sloth bears in semiarid regions in the Indian subcontinent. The study recommends the appropriate urgent management to arrest the conversion of native forest and scrub covers to P. juliflora dominant cover, thereby avoiding probabilistic human-sloth bear encounters.