DNA from droppings and hair settles a Himalayan mystery: Nepal's elusive bear is Tibetan

High in Nepal's Mustang and Dolpa districts, between 3,800 and 4,800 metres up, something large walks the alpine steppe — and for years nobody could say exactly what. Now droppings and hair, patiently collected between 2022 and 2024 and read for DNA, have answered: the bears are Tibetan brown bears, a lineage separate from the Himalayan brown bear, in the first genetically verified record for Nepal. The study, led by Rishi Baral of Hokkaido University and published in Ecology and Evolution, also ran 96 camera stations for 9,336 trap-nights, with IUCN bear experts reviewing the photographs. Fewer than 20 mature brown bears are thought to remain in Nepal, where the species is nationally Critically Endangered — which is exactly why the name matters. You cannot write a protection plan for a bear you have misidentified; now the plan can be written for the right one.

SDG 15 · Life on land