Beyond the human versus wildlife binary

Human-wildlife conflict occurs when animals pose a direct and recurring threat to the livelihood or safety of people, leading to retaliation against the species blamed and facilitating conflict about what should be done to remedy the situation.

Although this is not a new scenario since people and wildlife have coexisted for millennia, it is one that is becoming much more frequent, serious and widespread and a global concern for conservation and development alike. Human-wildlife conflict affects most large carnivores, as well as many other species groups, including but not limited to, elephants, pigs, deer, primates, sharks, seals, birds of prey, crocodiles, rhinos, otters to wolves preying on cattle in Idaho.

Conflicts between humans and wildlife are also triggering growing numbers of disease outbreaks, road accidents and crop damage. And the problem is likely to get worse unless new, humane measures to curtail animal numbers are developed in the near future, opine scientists.

It is a critical environmental issue that has been debated widely in which experts have discussed how best to limit the numbers of grey squirrels, wild boar, deer, feral goats, pigeons, parakeets and other creatures that are causing widespread ecological damage in many countries along with the need to develop contraceptives for animals.

A recent study in India addresses rising negative interactions between humans and animals, and proposes population control measures as long-term solutions while emphasising the need for continued research.

In states such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Kerala, where conflicts with certain animals such as rhesus macaques and wild boars reached a tipping point, the animals have been tagged vermin and cullings are mooted. As a humane solution to the problem, the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), after three years of research into the matter, has come up with mitigation measures, including immuno-contraception for population control of species most in conflict. The four species studied were rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus), wild pig (Sus scrofa) and elephant (Elephas maximus).

The WII researchers maintain that the current project was aimed only at establishing baseline information for possible strategies for future interventions.

Much research and collective experience across the world has shown that each case of conflict is different from the next, making it difficult to devise easily transferable solutions. Therefore, interdisciplinary approaches are essential to understanding what a given conflict is about, knowing what is needed for the mitigation of a given conflict, and ensuring access to the necessary skills and resources.

As countries increasingly grapple with this multifaceted challenge, human-wildlife conflict is beginning to appear in national policies and strategies for wildlife, development and poverty alleviation. Almost every country in the world hosts some form of human-wildlife conflict, and highly biodiverse developing countries particularly struggle with this issue.

India is home to about 29,964 elephants, according to the most recent elephant census, which was done in 2017. According to government statistics, India houses more than 60 per cent of the world’s wild Asiatic elephant population.

However, the world’s largest land animal faces many threats, and so do the people who live alongside them.

Conflicts between the two endanger not only people’s safety and elephants’ survival but also the health of ecosystems and the traditional lifestyles of rural communities.

People have coexisted with elephants for thousands of years, but boundaries, development activities, climate, and natural resources are changing, putting pressure on us and them.

Elephants are mega-herbivores that eat up to 150 kilograms of forage and drink up to 190 litres of water a day. They must navigate across large areas to find enough food and water to survive — but the land on which they depend is transforming due to growing human needs and a changing climate.

Around 1.2 billion people worldwide live on less than USD 1.25 a day. Many live in elephant-range countries — those where elephants roam. As some of the world’s most marginalised people, they frequently find themselves competing with wildlife for land, food, water, and other natural resources; they are also often unaware of their own encroachment onto the habitat of elephants and other wildlife.

Meanwhile, elephants increasingly find their home ranges fragmented by new villages, farms, cities, highways, or industrial growth such as mining. Barriers like fences and train tracks force them to travel longer distances and risk injury. The land where they once foraged is now home to human agriculture, and accessing watering holes increases their contact with villagers.

As climate change raises temperatures and alters rainfall patterns, resources become even scarcer and elephants get pushed into new areas, including communal lands. Humans face their own challenges as they must move deeper into elephant territory to collect water or firewood. The competition becomes fierce and life-threatening — for people and wildlife.

Every year, Sri Lanka reports the deaths of around 200 elephants from human-elephant conflict situations, and in India around 100 elephants die annually from conflict with humans. Wildlife authorities in Kenya report having to kill up to 120 elephants a year because of conflicts with humans.

The average female African elephant is 10–12 years old before she has her first baby, and Asian elephant females are slightly older. Because of their long generation time, it can take elephant families decades to recover from early deaths in the herd. And when adult females are killed, they often leave behind a calf who struggles to survive. Every elephant death drives the species closer to a point from which it can’t recover.

The largest male elephants weigh up to 6,800 kilograms (15,000 pounds). That makes them a hundred times heavier than many adult humans. When elephants feel threatened — or come across a barrier on their path toward food and water sources — they can injure or kill people and destroy homes and crops.

In India, around 400 people a year die from conflict with elephants. In Kenya, around 200 people died in human-elephant conflicts between 2010 and 2017.

Many people living in elephant range areas are already vulnerable in other ways. For example, they may be refugees who have fled their homes looking for safety or migrants seeking better living conditions, only to find themselves living in a core elephant habitat, putting their safety at risk.

Beyond the tragic loss of life, elephants can cause tremendous damage to homes, community buildings (such as schools), and farmland. In India alone, around 500,000 families a year lost crops due to elephants, which threatens families’ fragile incomes as well as their health and nutrition.

Habitat improvement, securing elephant corridors, etc. are some of the solutions for elephant depredation. Considering the lifespan, breeding age, gestation period, ecology, etc. of elephants are very different from other species studied, immuno-contraception may not be the best solution in this case.

In some locations, however, successful conservation measures focused on law enforcement are seeing increasing populations of elephants, which require proper management. As elephants feel safer, they become less likely to confine themselves to areas with low human presence.

In West Bengal, the state Forest department has decided to put radio collars on Himalayan black bears who descend to the Dooars from the upper reaches of the hills to track their movement and assess the reasons for their coming down. The idea would help to gather more information about their movement.

Frequent sightings of Himalayan black bear, a vulnerable species, in the plains in recent years have made wildlife conservationists raise questions.

Over the past three-and-a-half years, a number of bears, which usually stay in reserve forests of the hills such as Neora Valley National Park and Singalila National Park, have been found in a number of tea estates and forest villages in the Dooars, both in Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts.

While most bears were trapped by foresters and released into the wild, one bear was beaten to death by residents after it killed a youth in the Matiali block of Jalpaiguri.

The first sighting took place in 2021 at a tea estate in the western Dooars. Gradually, bear sightings were reported in a number of tea estates of Jalpaiguri in blocks such as Matiali, Nagrakata and Malbazar.

Giraffes have been going extinct for years, but their plight has gone largely unnoticed. Their population has declined by 40 per cent in the last 30 years, and there are now fewer than 70,000 mature individuals left in the wild. This decline has been labelled as a “silent extinction” because it has happened slowly and flown under the radar.

One of the critical issues threatening giraffes today is the drought in the Horn of Africa region, particularly its severity in Kenya, which many giraffes call home. Between June and November 2022, at least 6,093 wild animals perished in Kenya — more wildlife casualties than any other drought on record in the country — including 93 endangered Maasai giraffes.

The five biggest threats to giraffes are habitat loss, insufficient law enforcement, ecological changes, climate change, and lack of awareness.

Some of the worst tales come from West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh, where tigers have been reported to attack and often kill humans in double figures each year. In Tanzania, a number of surveys by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that lions were killing some 100 people every year, most of whom were farmers, sleeping in their fields to deter other animals that might be tempted to attack their livestock.

Animals may have become increasingly nocturnal to avoid hotter temperatures during the day, which leads to more attacks on livestock when people are asleep, which can then lead to retaliatory killings.

Across the Arctic, climate change is reducing the amount of sea ice, meaning polar bears are increasingly forced to hunt on land. The number of human-polar bear interactions tripled in the Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba, known as the “polar bear capital of the world”, between 1970 and 2005.

Blue whales are changing their migration timings as marine heatwaves become more frequent, increasing collisions with ships.

Drought is forcing elephants in Tanzania to look for food and water nearby villages, causing crop damage and retaliatory killings.

In Scotland, warming temperatures are driving an increase in barnacle geese, which eat grass farmers want for their sheep.

In western parts of the Russian Arctic, human activity has spread rapidly in recent years. New work camps and military units are being built, and offshore oil and gas exploration and production are underway.

The internet is replete with footage from these places showing polar bears walking from house to house, eating cookies from human hands, or digging through garbage as people cheer them on. These sorts of human behaviours seem to habituate some of the bears so they are no longer afraid of people. This can lead to greater conflict, with the potential for deadly consequences on both sides.

As sea ice continues to shrink, encounters between people and polar bears on land are likely to become more frequent.

On the other hand, competition for shared shellfish resources by sea otters and humans in Southeast Alaska has caused food security concerns, cultural and economic losses, and uncertainty about the future of various fisheries, including rural subsistence-based fisheries.

Nevertheless, with time and coordinated efforts, through the establishment of protected areas (PAs) and efforts of conservationists and wildlife managers, conservation has become synonymous with the physical separation of humans and wildlife. Ecological corridors stitch together fragmented habitats and isolated PAs, facilitate connectivity between herds, offer demographic rescue effects, and enhance gene flow.

Hence, a more robust understanding of human-driven change and a greater concern for its impacts on animal habitats, connectivity, and migratory patterns need to be explored to save ourselves and the species straddled between the man and animal boundary, figuratively positioned as the “missing link”.

Views expressed are personal