World bear Day

"World Bear day, 2022" was jointly celebrated by the WCB Research Foundation and Vadodara Wildlife Division at the Ratanmahal Wildlife Sanctuary on the 23rd March, 2022. In this celebration, 20 volunteers from various places were encouraged to participate and conduct a sloth bear awareness drive among the children living around the sloth bear habitat. This activity aimed to educate the local communities and develop an effective understanding of the ecological value of their surrounding flora and fauna, as well as a sloth bear-specific education to help mediate the overlap in habitat use between locals and bears, to increase the local knowledge about sloth bears, and to decrease the instances of human-sloth bear conflict.

As part of the celebration WCB Research Foundation educated 223 students from 1st to 12th grade and 45 teachers from six schools in the six villages located in the close proximity of the bear habitat in the Ratanmahal sloth bear sanctuary were also trained. All the schools were visited by our volunteers and engaged children with (1) activity booklets to spread awareness about the sloth bear, (2) recommendations on safe living in the sloth bear habitat through a detailed presentation with brief talk on sloth bear, followed by a documentary film and animation film on the same topic and (3) distributing bear education materials as a take-home message.