The number of wolf attacks has skyrocketed in recent times in villages in Uttar Pradesh state, leaving local residents living in constant fear.
Four-year-old Sandhyan was sleeping outside her grass hut in Uttar Pradesh, India, on the evening of August 17 when the entire village was plunged into darkness after a power outage. According to her mother, Sunita, the wolves attacked within two minutes. When they realized what was happening, the pack took her away. Sandhya’s body was found the next day in a sugarcane farm 500 meters from her home. Earlier in August, in a neighboring village, eight-year-old Utkarsh was sleeping under a mosquito net when his mother saw a wolf sneaking into their hut and screamed. Neighbors rushed in, causing the wolf to flee.
Since mid-April, a wave of wolf attacks has terrorized about 30 villages in the Bahraich district near the Nepal border. Nine children and one adult have been carried off and killed by wolves. The youngest victim was a one-year-old boy and the oldest a 45-year-old woman. At least 34 others have been injured.
Fear and panic gripped the villages that were attacked. With many houses left unlocked, children were kept indoors and men patrolled dark streets at night. Authorities deployed drones and cameras, set traps and used fireworks to scare the wolves away. So far, three wolves have been captured and sent to zoos. Such attacks on humans are extremely rare and have mostly involved wolves infected with rabies, a viral disease that affects the central nervous system. Infected wolves typically attack multiple times without eating their victims.
A report by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research found 489 wolf attacks in 21 countries, including India, between 2002 and 2020. Only 26 were fatal. About 380 people were victims of attacks by rabid wolves. There have been only two confirmed wolf-related deaths in North America in the past 50 years, according to Dave Mech, a prominent American biologist who studies wolf behavior.
Nestled between a river and dense forest, parts of Bahraich have long been home to wolves. Located on the floodplains of the Ghaghara River, the district of 3.5 million people is prone to seasonal flooding. Heavy rains and flooding dramatically change the landscape. Rising rivers inundate forests, likely forcing wolves out in search of food and water. Indian wolves prey on blackbuck, chinkara, and rabbits.
“Climate change is a gradual process but flooding can disrupt the habitat of wolves, forcing them into human settlements in search of food,” said researcher Amita Kanaujia of the Institute of Wildlife Sciences at Lucknow University.
While studying the deaths of numerous children by wolves in villages in Uttar Pradesh in 1996, wildlife experts found that children were poorly supervised because most of the victims came from poor single-parent families, often with only mothers. In impoverished rural India, livestock are often more protected than children. Faced with a decline in natural prey and limited access to livestock, children quickly became targets for hungry wolves.
The current wave of wolf attacks in Uttar Pradesh may be the fourth in four decades. In 1981-82, wolves in Bihar claimed the lives of at least 13 children. Between 1993 and 1995, another 80 children were attacked, this time by a pack of five wolves in Hazaribagh district. The deadliest period occurred over eight months in 1996, when at least 76 children from more than 50 villages in Uttar Pradesh were attacked, resulting in 38 deaths. The killings only stopped when authorities killed 11 wolves.
Jhala and his colleague Dinesh Kumar Sharma conducted a detailed study of the 1996 killings, examining the bodies, wolf hair samples, village housing, population density, livestock, and autopsy reports. The current attacks in Uttar Pradesh closely resemble their findings from nearly 30 years ago. In both cases, children were killed and partially eaten, with bite marks on their throats and lacerations on their bodies. Most of the attacks occurred at night, when children sleeping outdoors were taken away. Victims were often found in open spaces such as farms or pastures.
Like Bahraich today, the 1996 wolf attacks occurred in villages near the river, surrounded by rice paddies, sugar plantations, and marshes. Both cases involved densely populated villages with large numbers of vulnerable children from poor farming families, which added to the risk. Researchers are unclear whether the ongoing attacks are being carried out by a single wolf or a pack. Based on her 30 years of studying wolves, Jhala believes a single wolf is likely behind the recent killings. Villagers reported seeing a pack of five or six wolves in the fields during the day, while the mother of 8-year-old Utkarsh saw just one wolf sneak into her house and attack her son.
For decades, humans and wolves have coexisted peacefully in India. This coexistence has allowed wolves to survive despite frequent conflicts, especially over livestock. However, the recent spike in attacks has raised concerns. Wildlife experts like Jhala advise children in affected villages to stay indoors, sleep with adults, and be accompanied by an adult when they go to the toilet at night. Villagers should avoid letting children wander alone in areas where wolves may lurk and patrol roads at night.
Indian Wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) is a subspecies of the gray wolf that ranges from Southeast Asia to the Indian subcontinent. They are intermediate in size between the Himalayan wolf and the Arabian wolf and lack the thick fur due to their warmer climate. They travel in small packs of 6 to 8 and are less vocal than gray wolves. They hunt at night, from dusk to dawn, are fast and durable, and are known for their cunning. The Indian wolf is one of the most endangered populations of gray wolves in the world.