Fine-scale ecological and anthropogenic variables predict the habitat use and detectability of sloth bears in the Churia habitat of east Nepal

Once widespread throughout the tropical forests of the Indian Subcontinent, the sloth bears have suffered a rapid range collapse and local extirpations in the recent decades. A significant portion of their current distribution range is situated outside of the protected areas (PAs). These unprotected sloth bear populations are under tremendous human pressures, but little is known about the patterns and determinants of their occurrence in most of these regions. The situation is more prevalent in Nepal where virtually no systematic information is available for sloth bears living outside of the PAs. We undertook a sign survey-based single-season occupancy study intending to overcome this information gap for the sloth bear populations residing in the Trijuga forest of southeast Nepal. Sloth bear sign detection histories and field-based covariates data were collected between 2nd October to 3rd December 2020 at the 74 randomly chosen 4-km^2Â grid cells using a varying number of 400m long transe...树懒熊（sloth bear）曾广泛分布于印度次大陆的热带森林中，但近几十年来其分布范围急剧萎缩，多地出现局部灭绝。如今其现存分布范围中有相当一部分位于保护区（protected areas, PAs）之外。这些未受保护的树懒熊种群承受着巨大的人类活动压力，但在多数此类区域中，学界对其出现模式与影响因子仍知之甚少。这一情况在尼泊尔尤为突出，该国境内保护区外的树懒熊种群几乎没有系统性调研数据。为此，我们针对尼泊尔东南部特里朱加森林（Trijuga forest）内的树懒熊种群，开展了基于痕迹调查的单季占用研究，以填补该领域的信息空白。本研究于2020年10月2日至12月3日期间，在74个随机选取的4平方千米网格样方中，通过数量不等的400米长样线，收集了树懒熊痕迹检测历史数据与野外协变量数据。