Herdsmen in Yushu, in northwest China's Qinghai province, have had a difficult time recently getting along with wild animals living in the same area, in part because the shortage of natural food has made them turn against the local people.

The frequent bear attacks on villagers in recent years, along with their livestock and houses, are among the worst troubles faced by animal rights activists.

"We fear bears the most," said Niga, a 44-year-old local man. He said that in the past, bears, mostly Tibetan blue bears, only targeted men and animals, but now houses are under threat.

A grass-root Party official in Zhaqing Village in Yushu's Zaduo County, Niga said statistics show that the people living in Zhaqing have been victimized by bears and have suffered losses to different degrees.

He said that a villager told him the other day that a bear attacked that man's house again, ruining all the food and furniture inside. What puzzled them was that the bear even managed to find the flour, butter and honey in the house, and that the animal, after eating its fill, even messed up the rest of the food.

Some bears did behave well. "One bear broke into a house, ate some of the food there, and left without causing any damage," said Zhao Xiang, who has spent two years in Qinghai working for the Beijing-based Shanshui Conservation Center. But in all other accounts, bears seemed destructive, always taking the food and smashing the furniture.

An extreme incident took place in the jurisdiction of Tongtian River Conservation Center in April of last year, when a bear killed a woman who blundered into its lair. In revenge, her family members killed three bears afterwards, said Zhaxi Wensha, who works at a conservation center.

"What do you think we could do? Arrest them? Maybe not," said Zhaxi, noting that Tibetan blue bears are under national protection and killing them would be a criminal offence.

There are no official statistics showing how many Tibetan blue bears are living in Zaduo, whether the population is expanding or shrinking, or whether there have been any recent changes to their food chain.

But the intensifying conflicts between the people and the bears did not simply happen because of the multiplicity of the animal species.

By contrast, local herdsmen have more tolerance for wolves and snow leopards because Niga believed that wolves normally do not attack people, they just prey on cows and sheep; and snow leopards, which eat a larger variety of food, would only attack livestock when they are really desperate.

Twenty four-year-old Sangding and his family live by the River Zha. He said while he was grazing cattle, sometimes wolves came and ate the cows on the other side of the hill. "We have to live with that. It's a natural phenomenon and there's nothing to feel angry about," he said calmly.

Locals' tolerance for wolves and snow mountains also comes from their reverence to snowy mountains, such as the Animaqin Snow Mountain, a key protected area in the River's Source Natural Reserve. There, herdsmen regard wolves as the guard dogs of mountain gods and snow leopards as the emblems of mountain gods.

The lack of food may be a reason why some of the animals have turned against humans, said Niga. Along with urbanization, the number of livestock on the pasture dropped.

"The government encourages us to restore the original ecological environment; in response, many people have relocated to cities, which is also good for their children's education. Without enough cows and sheep to prey on, bears have to attack houses," he said.

Zaduo used to have up to one million livestock animals, he said, but the number has declined to around 40,000. Furthermore, people's ignorance in their careless blunder into animals' territories is another reason for the intensifying human-beast conflict, Niga said.

To compensate for the losses caused by wild animals, the Qinghai provincial government enacted a relief plan in September 2011. But the implementation of the plan seems complicated, even to staff members working in conservation centers.

For example, after a bear attack incident that involved one human death last year, staff members from the forestry department failed to find the "suspected assailant" -- a key piece of evidence in the compensation application -- after days of searching.

Meanwhile, the herdsmen said that they do not care too much about compensation plans, but wanted the government to take more protective measures to prevent losses, and they do not have to "harm nationally protected animals, such as Tibetan blue bears" to keep themselves safe.