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Models Projected About 58% Loss of Suitable Sloth Bear Habitat by 2070 Under the Higher-emission Scenario

Sloth bear walking through scrub in Ranthambore National Park, India
Research · Ecology

An Asia-wide modelling study published in 2026 projected substantial losses of suitable habitat for sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) under future climate and land-use change. The researchers modelled four Asian bear species, but sloth bears showed the largest projected proportional habitat loss in the high-emission scenario.

The researchers combined several species-distribution models in an ensemble, so the result did not depend on a single modelling method. For sloth bears, the models used 712 filtered occurrence records and estimated about 337,000 km² of currently suitable habitat across the species’ modelled range in India and Sri Lanka. Forest cover, distance to rivers and cropland were among the most influential variables, together with isothermality — a measure of how stable day-to-night temperature variation is relative to temperature variation across the year.

The higher-emission scenario projected the largest habitat loss

Under the higher-emission RCP 8.5 climate scenario combined with the A2 land-use scenario, the study reported projected habitat losses of about 53% by 2050 and 58% by 2070 for sloth bears. Even under the lower-emission RCP 2.6 climate scenario combined with A1b land use, projected habitat loss remained above 50% in both 2050 and 2070.

The spatial pattern was uneven. The authors describe central India as particularly vulnerable, with more than 90% of modelled habitat there potentially disappearing by 2070, while the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka were projected to remain comparatively stable. Some foothill areas of the Himalayas were projected to gain suitability.

Sources and image credit

  1. Singh, A. P., Sharma, L. K., Kumar, V., Sharief, A., Singh, H., Dar, S. A., Bhattacharjee, S., Joshi, B. D., & Thakur, M. (2026). Climate, land, and bears: Exploring habitat suitability of Asian bears under environmental changes. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 30, 101241.

Image: © Giles Laurent, gileslaurent.com, License CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Wild sloth bear in Ranthambore National Park, India, 17 March 2023. Wikimedia Commons. Cropped; representative species photograph, not a study animal. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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