The cub rode about on her mother's back, hip, and shoulder. To get aboard, the cub stood on its hind legs, grasped the female's long fur with its forepaws, and scrambled on. Eleven litters of cubs have been born here, the last in 1994. In 1998, we acquired a female named Hana, born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1994, and here on a breeding loan from the Toledo Zoological Gardens. The Toledo Zoo imported her because there are only 40 sloth bears in the North American zoo breeding program.
Conservationists believe sloth bears are threatened by habitat loss and change.
But until recently the only field studies have been in Chitwan. The rich, productive alluvial floodplain of the Rapti River, which flows through the Chitwan Valley, is not at all like most of the remaining sloth bear habitat. More than half of the forested wildlife habitat left on the Indian subcontinent is tropical dry forest, a highly seasonal habitat with low productivity compared to Chitwan. In October 1998, I visited this habitat in central India's Panna National Park, where A. J. T. Johnsingh and K. Yoganand are now studying sloth bears. Yoganand is his graduate student.