Sloth Bear Rediscovered in Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve, Nepal

摘要

Historically, sloth bears were distributed from Sri Lanka and the southern tip of India northward to the Terai and Siwaliks of Nepal, and extending eastward from there through the Duars of Bhutan (Garshelis et al. 2008, 2015). In the 1990s this species existed at high density in the Chitwan-Parsa complex (consisting of Chitwan National Park and Parsa Wildlife Reserve) and low density in Bardia National Park, but extirpated from Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve and Shuklaphatna Wildlife Reserve (SWR) (Garshelis et al. 1999). Since then the sloth bear has not been recorded in SWR despite continuous and extensive research on tigers and prey base monitoring throughout the 2000s. We present here the first evidence of sloth bear presence in SWR, which occurred during the National Tiger Survey in 2013 (Dhakal et al. 2014).