Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Description: Creator's Description: In order to evaluate the impact of recently introduced wildlife conservation policies, a human-wildlife conflict survey of three hundred herding households was conducted in the south-central Byang thang (Qiangtang) area of the Tibet Autonomous Region (Bod rang skyongs ljongs, Xizang Zizhi Qu). Results showed that Tibetan brown bears were the largest source of human-wildlife conflict in the survey area, affecting 49 percent of surveyed households between 1990 and 2006, with a 4.5 fold increase in conflict with bears occurring since implementation of various wildlife protection policies beginning in 1993. Types of bear conflict included livestock kills, raiding of human food supplies, damage to dwellings and furnishings, and direct attacks on herders. Brown bears have caused devastating economic losses to herders and anecdotal evidence indicates that retaliatory killing of bears by herders now poses the greatest threat to the Tibetan brown bear. Immediate measures must be taken to resolve this conflict if humans and brown bears are to coexist in the Byang thang region.

Means of availability: Also available as a PDF at http://texts.thlib.org/static/reprints/jiats/04/farringtonJIATS_04_2008.pdf