Poaching pushes Pakistan’s bear to rapid decline

(MENAFN) Pakistan’s bear populations are plummeting as a result of multiple environmental and human pressures, including habitat loss, poaching, and growing encounters between wildlife and communities, according to reports from local conservation experts.

While no nationwide scientific count has been completed to establish precise numbers, researchers believe bear populations in the country have dropped by roughly 20% to 30% over the last decade.

Muhammad Kabir, head of the Wildlife Ecology Lab at the University of Haripur, explained that although certain regions still sustain healthy bear groups, the broader picture is deeply troubling.

“So much so, bears have become locally extinct from several areas, where they once were believed to have been in ‘good numbers’,” Kabir said.

Pakistan hosts two distinct bear species: the Himalayan brown bear and the Asiatic black bear. The latter species has two subspecies — the Himalayan black bear (U. t. laniger), found in the cooler forested areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan; and the Balochistan black bear (U. t. gedrosianus), which occupies the drier mountain ranges of southwestern Balochistan, particularly near Khuzdar, Kalat, and the areas adjoining the Iranian border.

“Bears have been facing multiple threats, which has put them in the list of highly vulnerable species in Pakistan,” Kabir stated, pointing to deforestation, expanding farmlands, infrastructure development, and illegal hunting as primary causes. He added that the growing conflict between humans and wildlife has further intensified the crisis.

Faizan Ahmad, a researcher at the Pakistan Forest Institute in Peshawar, emphasized that the Asiatic black bear — once abundant throughout Asia’s forests — is now under severe strain within Pakistan, with its survival increasingly uncertain.

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