DEHRADUN: Amid snowfall at high peaks around Badrinath, when the area is largely abandoned by the local populace, wild bears have damaged several residential and commercial premises in search of food.
In the winter, the portals of the Badrinath shrine are closed and the local people too temporarily move to low-altitude areas while their houses remain locked.
This winter, especially in February, the bears have created mayhem by damaging several properties in search of food. According to their owners, there has been a lot of fear of bears in the villages of Mana, Niti Valley including Badrinath Dham.
Talking to this newspaper, one Mukesh Alakhnia said that he was informed by ‘Barfani Baba’, a sadhu meditating in Badrinath, of his house in Indra Bhawan Alakhnia mohalla being damaged by the bears. “I immediately informed the district administration and the forest department about this, asking them to get rid of this menace,” he said.
When contacted, Chief Wildlife Warden Sameer Sinha said, “The response to deal with human-wildlife conflict should be immediate and appropriate. The CM wanted us to create a state action plan to mitigate conflicts. So, we have brought it on a priority basis. The scheme is species-specific and district-specific as Uttarakhand has a versatile landscape when it comes to flora and fauna”.
Concerned over the rising cases of wild bear attacks in the hilly districts of the state, the forest department tagged them with GPS-enabled radio collars to track their movements in 2021. The population of wild bears in the state is around 500. Officials say human-bear conflict sometimes occurs at intervals in the state, with more than 1,600 attacks reported in the past 20 years since the state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh. This number is reportedly increasing every year.