As man-animal conflicts get increasingly common, Dr. Anish Andheria stresses the need for action and why there’s still hope for both sides.
Recently, I was part of a team investigating the death of a 21-year old tribal youth, presumably trampled by a wild elephant in Karnataka’s Nagarahole Tiger Reserve. The grieving family received Rs. 50,000 the next morning by the Forest Department with the promise of more money for the loss.
Photo: Mumbai Mirror
First published in Lonely Planet, Vol. 3, April 2011
Such scenes play out across India each day, as we snatch away habitat after habitat in the name of development and human rights. Naturally, when human life or property is lost, people empathise with people and not with the animal that was forced into a conflict situation. So intense is the problem that forest departments pay huge sums of money, sometimes comparable to the budget allocated to manage the park, to compensate for injury, loss of human life and livestock, or destruction of property by wild animals. Bandipur Tiger Reserve spends over Rs. 20 million on such compensation each year. This is a recurring cost, and in most cases, an ever-expanding recurring cost.
On the other hand, we’re increasingly seeing the gruesome lynching of leopards, bears and tigers at the hands of remorseless mobs that burst into celebration as soon as the hapless animal is clobbered. The ill-equipped, under-staffed forest department is helpless. In fact, many forest guards and officers too have been badly beaten up by unruly mobs who believe that wild animals are the sole responsibility of the forest department, who deliberately release deadly beasts to deter people from entering the forest!
Why did the elephant trample the young man in Nagarahole? Why did an angry mob kill a leopard in Nashik? The answers lie in the way we’ve altered our land-use pattern in the last hundred years. Not even a century ago, more than 22 per cent of India was thick, viable forest. Today, dense, good-quality forest occupies only about a fragmented five per cent, due to private resorts, agriculture, plantations, mines and above all highways, ports, dams and power plants – all meant to improve the so-called GDP of a developing nation.
Add to this the total apathy and environmental disregard shown by politicians and we’re looking at an irreversible catastrophe. Scientists will tell you that without animals, the remaining forests will die, as all natural process such as pollination, seed dispersal, pest control and transfer of nutrients across the food chain will collapse.
Naturally, the conflict between man and animals will become more acute. As human population and the associated inequity go up, the tolerance threshold of people affected by wild animals will decline.
Despite the advancements in science and technology and the conversion of huge contiguous tracts of healthy ecosystems into virtual graveyards, all the oxygen and water that we consume comes from natural forests. Over 600 large rivers originate in tiger forests alone! We have to protect our wildernesses if we want a healthy life for our children. One of the most crucial steps towards this is the mitigation of man-animal conflict.
The need of the hour is an integrated conflict-mitigation plan at union level. It should be mandatory for all current and future developmental projects to get clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, especially when they are within 25km of a protected area. Park-level committees consisting of wildlife biologists, local conservationists, park officials and representatives from local communities must devise plans for each national park and sanctuary. Non-scientific, non-documented relocation of wild animals must be stopped as displaced animals become disoriented and get into conflict with people. Farmers around protected areas must be trained to shift from animal-attack-prone crops like sugarcane, groundnut, bajra and paddy to indigenous plants that are part of the larger ecosystem and unpalatable to animals. Special budgets must be allocated for patrolling buffer areas where interaction between people and wild animals is high.
While all this seems an uphill task, solutions have already begun. Nyishi tribal chiefs in Arunachal have been drawn into the protection mechanism of the Pakke Tiger Reserve, and have not only stopped killing animals but act as watchdogs for the forest department. Eco -development Committees from villages in Coorg, with guidance from Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, have erected solar fences to stop elephants from entering their farmlands and to prevent livestock from grazing inside forests. The entire expenditure of maintenance and patrolling is managed by the villagers. Wildlife Conservation Trust has designed state-of-the-art Rapid Response Kits for 22 tiger reserves in 14 states to mitigate man-animal conflict. Corporate-funded awareness campaigns are being run on national television. Namasangha, a grassroots NGO, has installed over 27,500 gas cylinders across 214 villages around the periphery of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, thereby reducing illegal removal of 250 tons of fuelwood every day, thus stopping nearly 5,000 villagers from entering the forest weekly.
Such initiatives have shown the way in tackling this conflict. Whether we can take the best practices from remote areas and implement them at a larger scale in the nation, will determine the fate of wildlife and humans.
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About the Author: President of the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT), which is involved in projects across central India, Dr. Anish Andheria’s focus research area has been predator-prey relationships. An accomplished naturalist and wildlife photographer, he has authored several scientific papers and books.
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Disclaimer: The authors is associated with Wildlife Conservation Trust. The views and opinions expressed in the article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Wildlife Conservation Trust.
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