GLOBAL protected area coverage has reached an asymptote while land use intensification in non-protected spaces continues. Human-wildlife conflict is thus a challenging management issue. Here, we define ‘conflict’ as a direct negative interaction between humans and wild animals, where such antagonism arises out of a potential risk to human life, competition over resources, or both. In reality, the nature of interactions between humans and wildlife can range from positive, neutral to hostile and are influenced by historical, social, cultural, economic and political factors.

These distinctions of such human-wildlife interactions are important as they are not always negative. The leopards that live in human-dominated landscapes in India illustrate this. For example, there were close to six leopards living within a 100 km2 area in Maharashtra, where human densities were 300 per sq km. The area spanned sugarcane crops and settlements.¹ This act of passively or actively living alongside animals is definitely an advantage to conflict managers in India. In the past, methods like aerial shooting were used to cull wolves in Europe and North America. This was mainly done to diffuse an outcry from sheep ranchers, only to later realize the futility of using such eradication measures.²

Human-wildlife interactions are more frequent and pronounced in India. As a comparison, human population densities are almost 10 times that of the United States which is again three times larger in area than India. However, while megafaunal diversity has diminished in western range countries, India continues to provide refuge to half of the world’s wild tigers and Asian elephants. Here human densities vary from 100-1000 per sq km, as has been found across 30 protected areas in India. For instance, a quarter of the Asian elephants’ range lies inside legally protected areas.³ Ninety five per cent of the country’s land area is outside the ambit of protected areas and there are numerous wildlife species such as tigers, Asiatic lions, leopards, Indian wolf, striped hyenas, Himalayan black bears, sloth bears, Great Indian Bustards, snow leopards, smaller canids and felids such as the Bengal fox, golden jackal, fishing cat and jungle cat that live here.

 

This unprotected space is then constrained by the ‘development agenda’, a euphemism for the lack of ecologically informed land use planning for areas outside national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and tiger reserves. Since 2013, 2,511 km2 of very dense to mid-dense forest land was diverted in the country.⁴ Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest diversion of forest land (219.712 hectares), followed by Arunachal Pradesh. The maximum clearances for diverting forest lands were given for building roads (~32 %). Together with diversion for railways, ‘linear projects accounted for 62% of the total diversions, followed by diversion for power transmission lines (23.5%).’ Most of these projects were cleared in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra with no spatially explicit plan of how areas rich in biodiversity would be protected. Thus, the lack of an ecologically informed land use policy and the proliferation of such projects has often resulted in conflict that either stems from intense competition over resources (fish/livestock/land), conflict between humans or the anticipated risk to human life.

 

Different perspectives and expertise are required to deal with human-wildlife conflict. Smaller sized mammals, for example, create a different type of conflict where no human casualty occurs. Neither is the loss incurred comparable to those involving bigger mammals. Essentially, this conflict is not a priority for management interventions. However, there are some species of small cats (e.g. fishing cats) and wild canids (e.g. jackals) that kill domestic fowl and goats, and face retaliatory killing. But these challenges remain unaddressed. Economic or often perceived losses drive such killing, whereas other important ecological functions remain unknown.

According to conservative estimates, for example, almost 30 fishing cats (‘Vulnerable’ according to IUCN, Schedule I, Wildlife Protection Act, 1972) were killed in just over a year from an area of approximately 1500 km2 in West Bengal.⁵ However, their role in controlling rodents, which are agricultural pests and disease spreading agents, is most often ignored. Each fishing cat is capable of hunting 365 to 730 rodents per year.⁶ Seasonal tribal hunting poses other complexities since the conflict here is between conservation managers and tribal rituals. Fishing cats, golden jackals, otters, civets, squirrels and mongooses, as well as monitor lizards, snakes and birds are targeted during these hunts. Political pressure on the other hand might push to clear development projects, further constricting space for humans and other species.

Thus, complex social, cultural and political factors shape interactions between people and wildlife. This mandates synergies between multiple disciplines, including from conservation practitioners, social scientists and researchers understanding the human dimensions of conflict. It is clear that even though the nature and frequency of such interactions have changed over time, they have diverse implications for lives, livelihoods and conservation.

 

Against this complex backdrop are the recent and simplistic ‘solutions’ that have been proposed by the government. Five Indian states submitted proposals for culling wild animals in 2016, of which permission for scientific management for a limited time for a specific area was given to Uttarakhand (for culling wild boar), Bihar (for nilgai) and Himachal Pradesh (for rhesus monkey). In fact, Goa has sought to declare the national bird and the state animal (gaur) as ‘vermins’ which deeply concerned the conservation fraternity. Maharashtra and Gujarat had also requested permission to cull peacocks and nilgai respectively, the grounds of which are being examined.

We wish to state that we are not against culling per se since it might be a valuable tool in certain management situations (e.g. domestic dogs). However, we warn against the practice of culling of wild animals as a reactive measure. Translocating ‘problem’ animals is also a much practised reactive measure. The need for such removals could instead serve as indicators of an imbalance and does flag the need to identify the underlying causal reasons for conflict. For instance, bonnet macaque attacks on humans for food in Karnataka are a nuisance to tourists, but perhaps they are tied to the rapid loss of fruit bearing trees in Karnataka’s cities. In this article we posit that such reactive measures (culling and translocation) cannot be a substitute for creating environments to minimize conflict and maintain the delicate relationship between humans and wildlife.

 

If decisions to remove wildlife were solely science driven, there are multiple lines of evidence suggesting that culling and translocation may not be efficient conflict mitigation measures. For instance, culling wolves to reduce livestock loss led to their smallest population numbers in early to mid-20th century⁷ which consequently led to an increase in deer numbers across Europe and North America.⁸ Subsequently, over abundant deer populations became a threat to native vegetation and crops.⁹ The extermination of wolves in North America to protect sheep resurfaced in another form as another sheep predator, the coyote, population increased.¹⁰

Culling temporarily decreases wildlife numbers while also creating ‘vacuum’ spaces for new animals. For instance, hunting residential cougars or mountain lions in North America created more management problems as experienced cougars accustomed to human presence were killed and juvenile individuals, totally unfamiliar with the surroundings, dispersed into their territory. Young animals were prone to attack crouching people mistaking them for prey; livestock losses also increased.¹¹ Similarly, badger culling in the United Kingdom was meant to curb cattle tuberculosis but immigrating badgers increased cattle infection rates.¹² In France, hunting wild pigs in a locality led to crop raiding in adjacent places. Not only this, wild pigs returned once the hunters had left.¹³

 

The entire translocation process of being caught and released in another site causes stress to species. Many species, including large felids like leopards, live and breed in human dominated landscapes. If they are trans-located away from such areas, they immediately try and home back. It also results in an increase in the number of human attacks when they are in these unfamiliar areas.¹⁴

Managing elephant and human interactions is another major conflict management issue in India. More than 400 people die every year due to elephant attacks. Given that elephants have a complex but close-knit social system, culling or translocation can cause post traumatic stress disorder due to shock or absence of a member.¹⁵ In response to stress, males often show hyper-aggression and abnormally early ‘musth’ cycles. Such individuals cause death and massive property loss.¹⁶

 

Other methods such as immuno-contraception have been used to control elephant populations in Africa to varying degrees of success.¹⁷ If females in a herd are intermittently allowed to have a calf, they can be managed through this method. Yet, female elephants that had never given birth before were prone to depression because of not being able to give birth, and were harassed by bulls as they remained in heat due to the hormonal treatment. Additionally, this has led to a breakdown of elephant social systems and breeding groups.¹⁸ There are economic considerations related to using contraception since a large number of elephants need to be monitored, handled and given boosters. This costs about $ 60 or approximately INR 4000 per elephant.

As of now the compensation schemes in India function as ‘compassionate payments’ and are lacking on several fronts. There is little or no information relating to several factors including the quantum of compensation and ease of disbursement, making the present compensation schemes another reactive measure. For instance, there is no adaptive way to ensure that the market price of cattle is directly proportionate to the compensation paid, should the cattle be killed by a wild predator. For instance, people in Arunachal Pradesh are compensated a paltry Rs 5000 when the culturally important mithun (semi-domesticated bovine) is killed by a wild predator. Its market price is a minimum of Rs 50,000. Changing this amount requires the consent of the State Wildlife Advisory Board which is headed by the chief minister, while the local field level forest officers cannot increase the amount but have to bear the brunt of such political ambivalence. There is no evaluation of the efficacy of compensating losses that people incur. The situation is very similar if not worse in other Indian states with delays in disbursement leading to an increase in antagonism. The fallout of not having a proper process customized to local areas is that it creates ‘compassionate payments’ and does not address how compensation process and payments should be streamlined.

 

The process of implementing compensation schemes is cumbersome, to say the least. The entire verification process rests on the forest department staff and veterinarians reaching the locality on time. Often in inaccessible and remote areas such as in Arunachal Pradesh, there are considerable monetary costs involved for residents to report incidence of loss and thus deter timely action from the authorities. Around Kanha National Park in central India, only 22 to 41% of households reported receiving compensation.¹⁹

Indirect factors may also exacerbate conflict. For instance, digging artificial waterholes in African parks has increased elephant congregations locally as there is no shortage of water even in drier months.²⁰ This increase in elephant densities inside parks has led to crop invasions outside, as easily available fodder sources are enticing. Intensive aquaculture (e.g. catfish) and exotic species introduction has resulted in excess food resources for species such as the double-crested cormorant in Canada and North America and the great cormorant in UK, Japan and Australia. Consequently, there was an explosion of cormorant populations to the grave detriment of commercial freshwater fisheries themselves. However, money spent on culling cormorants could be better used in reducing coastal pollution and assisting aquaculture producers and fishermen to develop newer approaches.²¹

 

Further, perception of conflict caused by certain species also matters. For instance, in Zanzibar, red colobus monkeys were mistakenly perceived as coconut pests by residents, whereas coconut yields could have actually benefited as they have a pruning function. Additionally, these monkeys intermingle with groups of the inconspicuous but secretive Sykes monkeys that also feed on bananas, causing loss to plantation owners. Since the two monkey species move in large, noisy groups with the red colobus monkeys being more conspicuous, any crop damage was incorrectly attributed to the latter.²² Any investment to cull the monkeys would not have addressed the issue of coconut loss.

 

These perceived losses also have associated beliefs and are driven by different factors. For instance, black-tailed prairie dogs are believed to reduce the carrying capacity of the land for livestock, yet studies show the opposite. Prairie dogs actually improve grassland and forage quality, yet extermination programmes in the US have shrunk their range to a mere 1% (1900-1998).²³ Also, perception of losses might differ between genders, with women in Rajaji National Park harbouring more negative opinions in comparison to men, as they venture into the forests regularly, thereby, being more prone to injury.²⁴

This is not to take away that people living on the peripheries of protected areas are more prone to the experience of negative interactions with wildlife. In India, crop loss to wild herbivores like pigs, nilgai and macaques has a telling effect on farmers. Compensation for crop damage due to elephants now runs to crores of rupees in Odisha every year compared to negligible amounts paid out a decade ago. Failure to deliver compensation on time and the anticipation of harm to life and property has a telling effect on the general mental well-being of residents. These effects include depression, alcoholism and insomnia. Other effects from regular night guarding against crop loss are exhaustion and ensuing poor mental health in men and poor school performance in children.²⁵

Around Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, owners who previously lost livestock to carnivores adopted livestock protection methods more than those who had not, and those owners who had recently lost livestock for the first time expressed greater interest in changing their protection methods than those who had experienced prior losses.²⁶ Thus, local people’s perceptions matter the most for long-term conservation as well as in proactive conflict mitigation.

 

Mitigating threats to human life and property must be done proactively. Such measures could include better husbandry practices like corrals for protecting livestock from carnivores as in South Africa and Spiti in India. Sri Lanka’s innovative ‘seasonal paddy fence’ to mitigate conflict with elephants is also worth mentioning. Farmers install a fence at the beginning of the cultivation season and dismantle it at the end of harvest. Remnants from the harvest and tender grass shoots are then left as fodder for elephants; this practice does not disrupt animal movement throughout the year.²⁷ In the Anamalai hills which support India’s second largest elephant population, rapid response teams are deployed and an early warning system sends out bulk messages alerting residents about elephant presence in their vicinity.²⁸ The warning is also displayed on local TV channels. This ensures that people avoid walking alone at night when there is an elephant herd nearby.

 

Further, the team has a strong research focus on understanding elephant behaviour, conflict seasons and areas with maximum conflict occurrences.²⁹ They have also worked with environmentally responsible local tea planting companies to facilitate elephant movement through these habitats. Instead of fencing elephants out, some companies were advised to replace large fences with smaller ones around the built up area.

Other small-scale efforts are underway in India to aid in conflict mitigation. Elephants have moved North into the state of Maharashtra due to deforestation and disturbance from hydroelectric projects. A written guide (‘Sharing space with elephants’) was distributed for residents to use.³⁰ Mumbai has helplines for rapid response teams to reach an area in case there is leopard conflict reported around Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The Wild Seve Programme in the Western Ghats uses mobile technology where people call on a phone number upon incurring losses and a representative facilitates filing all the necessary paperwork to claim compensation.³¹

 

Dealing with conflict requires formation of multiple partnerships. A strong forest department presence is needed that collaborates with other departments such as railways, police and the district collectors. For instance, people are often attacked by sloth bears when they go out to defecate in the open during early morning hours or when they are moving around in low light conditions. Conflict can be avoided by providing sanitation and hygiene measures and better lighting in bear country. Further, feral dog populations and garbage dumps attract wildlife and better garbage disposal measures would deter wildlife from using such landscapes. The district council’s three-tier structure (zilla parishad, panchayat samiti, gram panchayat) was used in West Bengal to prevent small carnivore killing in the suburbs.³² Such collaborations could help address the limited presence of the forest department outside protected areas.

Local politics and the media hasten unscientific decisions to remove wildlife in order to ease local pressure. This puts the forest department under immense pressure to take action. Often due to political pressure, residential leopards are trapped when sighted in human habitations even though such habituated leopards might have never attacked people.³³

Indeed, conflict can be reduced when the right mitigation measures are in place and media reporting is neutrally framed and not sensationalized.³⁴ On the other hand, depicting animals as capable of hurting and injuring humans is neither scientifically accurate nor does it help ease conflict situations. On the contrary, it creates panic and fear amongst common people. Since the media plays an effective role in communicating ‘risk’ to property and life,³⁵ a deeper engagement with them on a timely basis can shape the way people perceive wildlife. This would benefit conflict management in the long run.

 

Conflict management has failed repeatedly when reactive decisions that are not rooted in science are taken. Secondly, proactive scientific schemes that are locally relevant have to be formulated to reduce or mitigate conflict by preventing crop/property damage, injuries and loss of human life. Transparent and rapid assessments are required to measure the damage and speedy disbursement of compensation upon identification of the victim. All such measures have to be made publicly accessible in local languages so that it is a starting point for meaningful dialogue.

Last but not the least, there is neither a proper national policy nor formal management prescriptions in place for managing wildlife outside protected areas. The present approach is to view wildlife outside protected areas as ‘stray’ individuals that are caught and need to be herded back inside national parks or wildlife sanctuaries.

 

The lack of a policy and ad-hoc reactions to wildlife outside protected areas has unintended negative consequences. The consequences of culling Eurasian tree sparrows in China between 1958 and 1962 warn against the social effects of adopting ecologically uninformed policies. Touted as China’s worst self-inflicted environmental disaster, it also cautions against reactive interventions to control wildlife numbers.³⁶ Without sparrows to perform the vital ecological functions of checking insect populations, agricultural yields stooped and rice production was hit the hardest. The government realized its mistakes and started importing sparrows from Russia, but it was too late. An increase in locust populations, agricultural damage and pesticide misuse contributed to the Great Chinese Famine (1958-61) that starved nearly 30 million people.

Globally, India presents a unique opportunity given its distinct ecological history, a high level of acceptance of wildlife and the megafaunal wild-life that has persisted despite high human densities. The urgency of development and economic growth has been overriding the creation of a legally binding, coherent, integrated national policy with multidisciplinary insights to manage human wildlife conflict in the country. India stands to lose an inherent culture of living with wildlife should the causes of its disruption be ignored and culling and removal are thought of as solutions.

 

* We thank Vidya Athreya for her insights and inspiration in understanding human-wildlife conflict in India.

Footnotes:

1. V. Athreya, M. Odden, J.D.C. Linnell, J. Krishnaswamy, K.U. Karanth, ‘Big Cats in Our Backyards: Persistence of Large Carnivores in a Human Dominated Landscape in India’, PLoS One 8(3), 2013, e57872.

2. J. Emel, ‘Are You Man Enough, Big and Bad Enough? Ecofeminism and Wolf Eradication in the US’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, 1995, pp. 707-734.

3. M. Rangarajan, A. Desai, R. Sukumar, P.S. Easa, V. Menon, S. Vincent, S. Ganguly, B.K. Talukdar, B. Singh, D. Mudappa, S. Chowdhary, A.N. Prasad, Gajah, Securing the Future of Elephants in India. Elephant Task Force Report, Ministry of Environment and Forests, GOI, New Delhi, 2010.

4. Forest Survey of India, 2015.

5. T. Adhya, P. Dey, U. Das, P. Hazra, Status Survey of Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) in Howrah and Hooghly, West Bengal. Intermediate report submitted to the Small Grants Programme, WWF-India, New Delhi, 2011.

6. T. Adhya, Habitat Use and Diet of Two Sympatric Felids – the Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) and the Jungle Cat (Felis chaus) – in a Human-Dominated Landscape in Suburban Kolkata. Master’s Thesis, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, 2015.

7. L. Boitani and J.D. Linnell, ‘Bringing Large Mammals Back: Large Carnivores in Europe’, in Rewilding European Landscapes. Springer International Publishing, Basel, 2015, pp. 67-84.

8. H. Okarma, ‘The Trophic Ecology of Wolves and their Predatory Role in Ungulate Communities of Forest Ecosystems in Europe’, Actatheriologica 40, 1995, pp. 335-386.

9. W.S. Alverson, D.M. Waller, S.L. Solheim, ‘Forests too Deer: Edge Effects in Northern Wisconsin’, Conservation Biology 2, 1988, pp. 348-358; W.J. Ripple, R.L. Beschta, ‘Linking Wolves and Plants: Aldo Leopold on Trophic Cascades’, BioScience 55, 2005, pp. 613-621.

10. W.J. Ripple, A.J. Wirsing, C.C. Wilmers, M. Letnic, ‘Widespread Mesopredator Effects After Wolf Extirpation’, Biological Conservation 160, 2013, pp. 70-79.

11. K.J. Teichman, B. Cristescu, C.T. Darimont, ‘Hunting as a Management Tool? Cougar-Human Conflict is Positively Related to Trophy Hunting’, BMC Ecology 16, 2016, p. 44.

12. C.A. Donnelly, R. Woodroffe, ‘Bovine Tuberculosis: Badger-Cull Targets Unlikely to Reduce TB’, Nature 526, 2015, pp. 640-640.

13. Catherine Vincent, ‘Survival of Europe’s Fittest’, The Guardian, 19 October 2010.

14. V. Athreya, M. Odden, J.D.C. Linnell, K.U. Karanth, ‘Translocation as a Tool for Mitigating Conflict With Leopards in Human-Dominated Landscapes of India’, Conservation Biology 25, 2011, pp. 133-141.

15. G.A. Bradshaw, A.N. Schore, J.L. Brown, J.H. Poole, C.J. Moss, ‘Elephant Breakdown’, Nature 433, 2005, p. 807.

16. Ibid.

17. Rose Eveleth, ‘The Elephant in the Room: How Contraception Could Save Future Elephants from Culling’, Scientific American, 22 December 2011.

18. R.J. Van Aarde, T.P. Jackson, ‘Megaparks for Metapopulations: Addressing the Causes of Locally High Elephant Numbers in Southern Africa’, Biological Conservation 134, 2007, 289-297.

19. K.K. Karanth, A.M. Gopalaswamy, R. Defries, N. Ballal, ‘Assessing Patterns of Human-Wildlife Conflicts and Compensation Around a Central Indian Protected Area’, PloS One 7(12), 2012, pp. e50433.

20. S. Chamaillé-Jammes, H. Fritz, M. Valeix, F. Murindagomo, J. Clobert, ‘Resource Variability, Aggregation and Direct Density Dependence in an Open Context: the Local Regulation of an African Elephant Population’, Journal of Animal Ecology 77, 2008, pp.135-144.

21. Richard King, ‘To Kill a Cormorant’, Natural History 118(2), March 2009.

22. K.S. Siex, T.T. Struhsaker, ‘Colobus Monkeys and Coconuts: A Study of Perceived Human-Wildlife Conflicts’, Journal of Applied Ecology 36, 1999, pp.1009-1020.

23. A.J. Dickman, Key Determinants of Conflict Between People and Wildlife, Particularly Large Carnivores, Around Ruaha National Park, Tanzania. University College London, University of London, 2009.

24. M. Ogra, ‘Attitudes Toward Resolution of Human-Wildlife Conflict Among Forest-Dependent Agriculturalists Near Rajaji National Park, India’, Human Ecology 37, 2009, pp. 161-177.

25. M. Barua, S. Bhagwat, S. Jadhav, ‘The Hidden Dimensions of Human-Wildlife Conflict: Health Impacts, Opportunity and Transaction Costs’, Biological Conservation 157, 2013, pp. 309-316.

26. J.R.B. Miller, Y.V. Jhala, O.J. Schmitz, ‘Human Perceptions Mirror Realities of Carnivore Attack Risk for Livestock: Implications for Mitigating Human-Carnivore Conflict’, PloS One 11(9), 2016, pp. e0162685.

27. Living Next Door to Elephants, The Sunday Times, 18 September 2016.

28. M.A. Kumar, D. Mudappa, T.R.S. Raman, M.D. Madhusudan, The Elephant Hills: Conservation of Wild Asian Elephants in a Landscape of Fragmented Rainforests and Plantations in the Anamalais, India. CERC Technical Report, 2004.

29. M.A. Kumar, Effect of Habitat Fragmentation on Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) Ecology and Behaviour Patterns in a Conflict-Prone Plantation Landscape of the Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats, India. Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, UK, 2006.

30. P. Mehta, J. Kulkarni, Sharing Space with Elephants: A Do It Yourself Guide for Reducing Crop Damage. WRCS Technical Reports and Publications, Pune, 2015.

31. Wildlife Conservation Society, Wild Seve: A Pioneering Conservation Initiative Addresses Human-Wildlife Conflict in India, 2016.

32. P. Dey and T. Adhya, ‘Fishing Cat Conservation in West Bengal: adding "pride value".’ in press.

33. Neha Sinha, ‘Delhi Tries to Catch its Leopard Even as the Law and Best Practice Forbid’, The Wire, 29 November 2016.

34. S. Bhatia, V. Athreya, R. Grenyer, D.W. Macdonald, ‘Understanding the Role of Representations of Human-Leopard Conflict in Mumbai Through Media Content Analysis’, Conservation Biology 27, 2013, pp. 588-594.

35. M.L. Gore, W.F. Siemer, J.E. Shanahan, D. Schuefele, D.J. Decker, ‘Effects on Risk Perception of Media Coverage of a Black Bear-Related Human Fatality’, Wildlife Society Bulletin 33, 2005, pp. 501-551.

36. George Dvorsky, China’s Worst Self-Inflicted Environmental Disaster: The Campaign to Wipe out the Common Sparrow, Gizmodo Media Group, 2012.