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A rare and fantastic news for Wild Life lovers and Government of Jammu & Kashmir as Well as India; Brown Bears are sighted at Kargil and after 1999 Kargil war.
Yes this is now a confirm fact a group of Wildlife officials spot ursine family in sector where their natural habitat was damaged by 1999 war.
The J&K Wildlife Department has recorded its first ever sighting of a group of eight Himalayan brown bears in Kargil’s Drass Sector, where the 1999 war had wreaked havoc with their habitats.
“The sighting of eight brown bears, including three adult females and five grown-up cubs, is a rare record. No such sighting has ever been reported from J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where these animals are distributed,” Kargil Wildlife Warden Intesar Suhail told The Hindu over phone from Kargil, 200 km away from Srinagar.
Mr. Suhail who was heading A Wildlife Department team, able to spot the rare Himalayan brown bears, in Ladakh’s Drass area with mountain ranges of 16,000 to 21,000 feet, just before the down on May 12,2016.
“We trekked for two-and-a-half hours and spotted these animals. Otherwise sightings are only reported during the night, that too of a solitary bear or with a cub. Besides these eight, we expect at least three male bears to active the area,” he said.
When they spotted another sight after Two days a brown bear and a cub in the afternoon, again a reason to joy.Mr. Suhail rightfully guessed a Den must be near by another good reason to be happy.
Himalayan brown bears spotted in just one wildlife zone out of four major areas of Suru, Zanskar, Drass and Kargil in the Ladakh region is a very promising sign for the Wild Life Fans.
Habitat of A brown bear requires about 100 square kilometer as its territory to survive Wildlife Department recorded 25 raids on cattle sheds by brown bears in the past six months in Kargil, a clear sign of increase in their numbers, said Mr. Suhail, whose department is working on a brown bear census.
In 2010, an extensive survey, ‘Carnivore-human conflict in Kargil and Drass’, carried by the Rufford Small Grant and the State Wildlife Department in the district did not record a single Himalayan brown bear sighting.
Only 11 indirect sightings, based on scat, scrape and pug-marks, were reported.
Sightings of brown bear, which is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ list of vulnerable animals, has come down significantly in Kashmir Valley too in the past few decades.
Source : The Hindu
