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It could have been the Rockies. Or Kodiak Island. Or Kamchatka.
Instead, Pakistani singer-songwriter Quratulain Balouch was recently attacked in the fabled Deosai National Park in Gilgit-Baltistan (a part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) not by a Grizzly (Ursus arctos horribilis) or a Kodiak brown bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi), but instead by their cousin, the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus).
Balouch’s team has stated that she is recovering and request privacy at this time.
“On the night of 4th September 2025 while she was sleeping in her tent she was attacked by a brown bear. The CDRS team quickly tried and succeeded in scaring the bear away. Quratulain was immediately rushed to the nearest medical facility. Her condition is now out of danger. Doctors have advised that she is stable. Thankfully there were no fractures, and she is recovering from her wounds. She needs rest and privacy at this time,” reads the statement issued by Balouch’s team on Instagram.
Balouch may have escaped. But if recent scientific studies are to be believed, conflict between humans and the enigmatic Himalayan brown bear is increasing across the Himalayas, compounded by the warming of the range and anthropogenic food waste generation.
A mysterious species
The brown bear is the top predator in Europe and North America and its interactions with humans have been well-documented in these regions.
But in the Himalayas and Central Asia, the ursid still remains a bit of an enigma.
In their 2020 paper, Projected climate change threatens Himalayan brown bear habitat more than human land use, S A Dar, S K Singh, H Y Wan, V Kumar, S A Cushman and S Sathyakumar note that, “The ecology of brown bears has been studied extensively across its range in North America and Europe. However, in India and other parts of Asian highlands, the ecological information on brown bears is limited. The few existing studies are on phylogeography, feeding ecology, species distribution modelling, human-bear conflicts and daily activity patterns.”
The bear, according these authors, is a potential indicator and umbrella species in the Himalayan ecosystem.
However, even before the bear can become more well-known to a wider audience, its population is already on a downward spiral, courtesy climate change and human land use.
The Himalayas have witnessed extensive clearing of native forests and grasslands. The human population of the region is still growing rapidly due to which there are increasing pressures for more intensive human land use.
“Furthermore, the Himalaya is also one of the fastest warming regions in the world, with mean annual temperature expected to increase by 1°C–2°C by 2050 and 1.5°C–3°C by the end of 21st century,” write the experts.
All this is having an effect on the Himalayan Brown Bear.
Due to habitat loss and fragmentation caused by human land use as well as increased human pressure, the species population is declining, low in density and largely isolated in the alpine and sub-alpine regions of the north-western and western Himalayan ranges.
“Furthermore, climate change emerges as a threat to the brown bear, causing displacement and range contraction,” they note.
Dar, Singh, Wan, Kumar, Cushman and Sathyakumar write that “there is a strong association of brown bear distribution and human disturbances represented by the proportion of croplands and urban/built-up areas in Western Himalaya”.
“Our results suggest that brown bear occurrence is concentrated in areas with very low human population density and low human footprint, which is similar to results in other parts of the species range,” they note.
However, this does not mean attacks do not take place. They do, and in fact, are increasing.
Human-brown bear conflict
The paper Human-Bear Conflict and Community Perceptions of Risk in the Zanskar Region, Northern India published in August 2021 by Sophie May Watts, Tsewang Namgail and Kirti Chavan is an eyeopener on the rising conflict between humans and brown bears in the Himalayas.
The authors document the conflict in the remote Zanskar region of Ladakh.
“Conflict between humans and Himalayan brown bears has been reported since the early 2000s in northern India,” they write. “Nonetheless, it has received little attention from conservationists and wildlife managers. In this study, we have presented evidence that the occurrence of HBC has increased in the last 5 years across the Zanskar region compared to being rare or absent in the past.”
The scientists detail an important reason as to why these conflicts are taking place. While bears predate on livestock like cattle, goats and sheep, they area also becoming habituated to human-made food.
“Based on the increased frequency of bears entering villages in search of food, particularly bears entering people’s houses, we suggest that the Himalayan brown bears in the Zanskar region might be human food-conditioned,” they write.
May Watts, Tsewang Namgail and Kirti Chavan found that human-bear conflict spiked in autumn as bears then are in a condition called ‘hyperphagia’, when they need to accumulate fats prior to winter hibernation, gestation, and lactation between December and March.
“The changing climate may also play a role by extending the potential foraging season; villagers have observed a reduction in the amount of snowfall each year along with a shortening of the winter cold season. Villagers have also seen bears actively looking for food in the middle of winter, which could also be evidence of human food-conditioning. In central Asia and the Asian Highlands, research suggests that changes in temperature can significantly affect the geographical distribution of brown bears. This may have further contributed to an increase in HBC in Zanskar as the wider Ladakh region shows an overall trend of warming temperatures and Himalayan brown bears may be inhabiting areas where they were previously absent,” the experts write.
They add that there have been no recorded human deaths or injuries caused by Himalayan brown bears in Zanskar.
In a 2022 paper, Living with a large predator: Assessing the root causes of Human–brown bear conflict and their spatial patterns in Lahaul valley, Himachal Pradesh, Vineet Kumar, Amira Sharief, Ritam Dutta, Tanoy Mukherjee, Bheem Dutt Joshi, Mukesh Thakur, Kailash Chandra, Bhupendra Singh Adhikari and Lalit Kumar Sharma note that, “Brown bear-mediated conflicts have caused immense economic loss to the local people living across the distribution range. In India, limited knowledge is available on the Himalayan brown bear (HBB), making human-brown bear conflict (HBC) mitigation more challenging.”
They studied HBC in the Lahaul valley using a semi-structured questionnaire survey by interviewing 398 respondents from 37 villages.
The authors found that conflict incidences were relatively high in summer and frequently occurred in areas closer to the forest and between the elevations range of 2,700 m to 3,000 m above sea level.
“We found that anthropogenic food provisioning for Himalayan Brown Bear, livestock grazing in bear habitats, and poor knowledge of animal behavior among the communities were the major causes of HBC,” they added.
The experts suggested horticulture crop waste management, controlled and supervised grazing, ecotourism, the constitution of community watch groups, and others to mitigate HBC. “We also recommend notifying a few Himalayan Brown Bear abundant sites in the valley as protected areas for the long-term viability of the HBB in the landscape.”
However, according to Sathyakumar et al, setting aside protected areas and preventing development in wildlands will not be sufficient to save the charismatic species in the region.
“Therefore, we call for mitigation measures of climate change be incorporated into conservation plans to effectively conserve biodiversity in this region,” they wrote.