Untitled Document

Western Conservationists focused on the Asian Bear Trade during the last twenty years when the demand for Bear Gall bladders reached obscenely high figures and bear populations were threatened world wide. However there has also been a new and growing concern on the national and international levels, at the use of the bear in blood sports, such as the Bear baiting events in Pakistan, or for entertainment, as in the travelling menageries and circuses throughout India, and for use as dancing bears. This project was undertaken to collect accurate and factual first hand information on the situation of the Indian dancing bear, the process by which it is captured / poached, together with its condition as it is transported and as it changes hands till it reaches the community that uses it for dancing. The report also studies the socio-economic condition of the community that uses the dancing bear and records its treatment, maintenance, training, and upkeep while in captivity.


	Preface	Conents

	Western Conservationists focused on the Asian Bear Trade during the last twenty years when the demand for Bear Gall bladders reached obscenely high figures and bear populations were threatened world wide. However there has also been a new and growing concern on the national and international levels, at the use of the bear in blood sports, such as the Bear baiting events in Pakistan, or for entertainment, as in the travelling menageries and circuses throughout India, and for use as dancing bears. This project was undertaken to collect accurate and factual first hand information on the situation of the Indian dancing bear, the process by which it is captured / poached, together with its condition as it is transported and as it changes hands till it reaches the community that uses it for dancing. The report also studies the socio-economic condition of the community that uses the dancing bear and records its treatment, maintenance, training, and upkeep while in captivity.
	This investigation revealed that the dancing bear suffers injuries and trauma throughout its life, but the first two years are particularly cruel and torturous for the captured bear cub. The actual capture and transportation can often be over hundreds of miles, in conditions of deprivation and dirt, and consequently there is a high mortality rate. During its first year it undergoes two or more nose piercings and a removal of the Canine teeth in a manner that is barbaric and primitive. The training that follows has as its keywords: pain and fear. The rest of its life as a dancing bear is made difficult by the fact it changes hands very often and is danced in a vast variety of climates and terrain’s. It has an unnatural and deprived diet and spends much of its life tethered to a short three or four feet rope.
	The actual hunting and poaching of the bear cub not only causes a decline in the bear population in the wild but also encourages the steady destruction of the eco-system and its habitat in India, and in fact leads to ever increasing deadly encounters between bear and man in the wild, which has not yet been fully documented, but we are certain it has a role to play in the increasing sloth bear aggression. Plantation development, timber extraction, collection of honey, the mahua leaves and flowers, expansion of local farms, commercial projects, intrusion by cattle, all reduce the Sloth Bears natural habitat. Currently the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, has initiated a project to study the increase in Sloth bear - Man conflict in Central India, in an area that we have identified during our investigation as being one of heavy poaching and human intrusion.
	Throughout our preliminary investigations the authorities denied any methodical poaching / hunting of bear cubs is taking place in the protected forest areas. They feel any orphaned cub “found in the forest / market place” is “incidental”; the death of the mother being “accidental”. Similarly the authorities claim the bears in Zoos (legal captivity so to say) numbering on an average 150 sloth bears and 166 Himalayan black bears are all the result of breeding bears in captivity; they have no knowledge of cubs being orphaned / captured in the wild and consequently given to the zoos / travelling menageries. So too no documented data was available of how many dancing bears there could be with the Kalandars within a well identified area, even along well marked and oft-frequented tourist routes such as we covered or deeper in more inaccessible rural areas.There was no record of the Kalandar villages nor any data available of the number of bear cubs which seemingly entered the villages to be redistributed amongst the Kalandars.The authorities, by and large, felt a “fuss” was being made over this relatively harmless method of earning a living. In conclusion very little has been researched in India about bears, particularly the sloth bear, both in the wild and in captivity. Dr A.J.T. John Singh and his research scholar,Mr Yogi, (Wildlife Institute, Dehradun,) are currently conducting a Bear Collaring project in Madhya Pradesh and Dr. N.P.S. Chauhan (Wildlife Institute, Dehradun,) has a project on the Sloth Bear - Man conflict in Central India. However as these projects are still in process, data is not yet available for this study. In short no Conservation management programmes have been initiated for the Sloth Bear in India.
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