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Aarav Pundir and his friends arrived at their school in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli 15 minutes early on Monday and were cleaning the front yard when they saw two bears, a female and a cub. While many entered the classroom for grade 7, 11-year-old Pundir and 12-year-old Divya Chaudhary were left behind. “The adult bear went towards the classroom while the cub dragged Aarav into the jungle behind the school,” said their teacher, Upendra Sati. With no adult around to save them, Chaudhary chased the cub for a hundred metres, finally forcing it to leave Pundir behind.
This is the second attack at the government upper primary school, Harishankar, where 12 students are enrolled. “It is as if the animals know there is easy prey,” said Sati over the phone from the hospital in Chamoli’s Pokhari, where the two students have been admitted. Pundir has sustained injuries to his leg, hands, and head.
The number of deaths from bear attacks in Uttarakhand has risen to eight, the highest since the state was formed in 2000. So far, 95 people have sustained injuries. Moreover, 14 people have been killed by leopards in the state, and 98 have been injured. The highest deaths in bear attacks has been recorded in the Badrinath division. Wildlife officials in the state say that the delay in hibernation, habitat loss due to ecological disasters, cropping patterns and a lack of solid waste management have led to the crisis.
On Saturday, a bear had attacked the school, but the children were unharmed after the three teachers sounded an alarm. The block education officer had set the school’s timing to 10 am on Monday as a result, but the students arrived early. “We were a few hundred metres away when we heard screams from the school. The bear was trying to break the door open, but the students pushed against it from inside,” said Sati.
In the meantime, the cub had dragged Pundir away. “The little brave girl ran after it, screaming. The cub let the child go, and we found him unconscious around 100 metres from the school. Divya was injured as she fell repeatedly and scraped her skin against the shrubs,” said the village headman, Bharat Chaudhary.
The block education officer, Vinod Singh Matura, said that new timings will be in place after the Christmas holiday. “We have asked the teachers to move to online classes for the next two days, after which the school will open at 11 am till 2 pm,” he said.
The range officer of Nagnath, Naval Kishore Negi, said that the department has deployed two men in the area who patrolled the school premises around 9 am. “As there were no children, they moved to another area. We received the information around 10 am and rushed to the site. We have increased deployment and have been broadcasting announcements regarding waste disposal and appropriate conduct. The villagers have been asked not to venture into forests alone,” Negi said, adding that the village has not seen such anomalies in bear behaviour until now.
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The village is situated 1,576 metres above sea level and has been witnessing warmer winters over the last few years, said Negi. He added that this is the third major incident in the range. A woman was earlier injured in an attack while collecting fodder in the forest. “The bear would stick to their habitats, but this year, it has started visiting the village,” he said.
Chaudhary said they have spotted cubs in the village. “They are breeding, and this will pose a threat to co-existence. We have requested the department officers to terminate them, but they have yet to respond to us positively,” he said.
The DFO of the Kedarnath division, under which the block falls, Sarvesh Dubey, did not respond to calls and messages seeking a comment.
The Asiatic black bear, found in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal, Uttarakhand, and northeastern states, inhabits forests ranging from 1,200 metres to 3,300 metres. The movements of the black bear are influenced by changes in the quality, quantity and distribution of food, as they need to store excess calories to support hibernation. Sambandam Sathyakumar of the Wildlife Institute of India has written how, in the Himalaya, due to a poor protected area network across the bear habitat of less than 10 per cent, the species comes in frequent contact with humans for the use of space and resources.
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Forest department officials have said that there seems to be a shortened hibernation period for black bears at higher elevations, influenced by climate change. Reasons for the increased incidence of reported cattle killing and attacks on humans by Asiatic black bear have also been attributed to the shrinking habitat due to the extension of agricultural lands, human encroachment, and habitat degradation.
State Forest Minister Subodh Uniyal had earlier said that climate change is a very broad factor that is having an unpredictable impact. He described the incidents of bears attacking humans in various parts of the state as worrying, saying that this is the time when wild bears should be in deep hibernation, but in some places, they are roaming in fields and farms.
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