Abstract
Mammals around the world face serious threats and experience massive
decline in their populations and geographic ranges. The sloth bear has
become extinct from two of five range countries and the existing
population face serious conservation threats. Despite being endangered
in Nepal, decades of conservation obliviousness have hindered their
conservation and management. We assessed the distribution and habitat
use by sloth bears in relation to landscape, environmental, and
anthropogenic factors in Chitwan National Park, Nepal. We conducted a
sign survey from March-June 2020 in 4*4 km2 grids (n=45) in a
checkerboard approach. An observation was spatially replicated four
times by recording information in four continuous search trails of 1 km
each. We recorded presence/absence of sloth bears, termites, fruits and
disturbance in the field and extracted information on tree cover,
terrain ruggedness and vegetation index from remotely sensed image of
the study area. The data was analyzed using single species-single season
occupancy method in PRESENCE software. By using repeated observations
these models account for imperfect detectability of species to provide
robust estimates of species occupancy. Averaged habitat occupancy
estimate obtained from the best models was Ѱ = 0.53 ± 0.04SE with
detection probability p = 0.44 ± 0.1SE. Selection of variable based on
summed AIC weight from the top models (AIC<2) showed that
presence of termites (ƩWi=0.66) significantly influenced sloth bear
habitat occupancy. Habitat occupancy was positively influenced by
termites followed by fruits, disturbance, terrain ruggedness and
vegetation productivity, whereas, it was negatively influenced by tree
cover. We suggest that future conservation interventions and action
plans aimed at sloth bear management must adequately consider these
requirements and issues.