The Gaia People & The Habitats Trust

In the rarefied heights of the western Himalayas, an ancient creature that has featured in folklore and fever dreams for centuries, still prowls. The Brown Bear, or Ursus arctos Isabellinus, was here before human settlements, villages, or electrified and militarized border fences arrived. Today humans and bears find themselves caught in an uneasy truce, a hostility over territory that doesn’t bode well for either species as climate and human-created scarcities push both species into each other’s lands. Niazul Hassan Khan is a young wildlife scholar, a local who has known displacement from a troubled home too. He returns to his community in Drass, Kargil to understand the Brown Bear, and broker peace between the animals and his people. As climate change hastens glacial melt and shortens winters, transforming the mountains and the lives that depend on them, Niaz and his guide trek in search of answers and the possibility of lasting survival for the land, its people, and the bear.