Wildlife Human Conflict: Some Questions

This piece appears in the Assam Tribune on 16^th February 2016.

Many thanks to Assam Tribune and Narayan Sharma.

The wildlife human conflict occupied a significant chunk of time during a recent meeting called to put in place a conservation plan for a priority landscape. Agreements and disagreements over the topic spilled over from the sessions into tea-time and late evening discussions. While these deliberations did not provide answers they helped set off a stream of questions; most of which remained unanswered. The paragraphs that follow carry some of these discussions. Unanswered questions, as Colin Wright said, “aren't threats; they're challenges and catalysts”.

One would like to begin with Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mizoram. The major issue today, in the landscape, is land-use change; jhum (shifting cultivation) is being replaced by cash crops like oil-palm. As a corollary conflict has turned from being primarily ‘seasonal’ into a ‘round the year’ phenomenon. Increased investments (especially in oil-palm) seem to have a significant role in decreasing tolerance levels of the people concerned. That representatives of companies, appointed by the State to propagate these crops, encourage people to hunt wildlife which dares to come to the plantations surely does not help. The situation is exacerbated by a chunk of the population which has ‘conveniently understood’ that hunting is prohibited only inside the Protected Area. Why oil-palms are carpeting buffer zone of a Tiger Reserve is a separate discussion altogether!

Interactions with people, who share the landscape with wildlife, were as educative as they were interesting. They talked of measures taken to reduce conflict. These include planting species - preferred by wildlife - on the boundary (to prevent them from coming in the fields), using tarpaulins, clearing areas near fields or putting up fence, hanging cloths (at times after applying phenyl), putting empty tins or cans amongst others. The drivers were intriguing – tarpaulins were used if made available from the block development office meaning they were put to use only in villages near to the office; while people seemed reluctant to put in efforts in fencing and clearing given the maintenance they warrant. Questions like whether they discussed the issue in their village council meetings and if they had explored avenues to use NREGA funds for fencing left them surprised. They in turn wanted to know why the compensation rate was same as that of a few years ago. Why was it uniform for crop depredation in wet rice cultivation, jhum (with its multi-cropping) and plantations? Why was amount being paid annually when conflict occurred across the year?

What is the lens that we look at conflict with? A wildlife manager shared of having read a lengthy report on a recent workshop focusing on wildlife-human conflict. The document which brought together significant proportion of existing knowledge on the topic was starkly inadequate when it came to suggesting steps to be taken to reduce conflict. He was keen to access papers (read published literature) that could help design an intervention on wildlife human conflict. Would they suffice he was asked! This since majority of the papers seemed to be written with a view to understand the issue and generate a publication while his office’s final goal was to design (and implement) an intervention that led to reduction in conflict. How much the understanding would change with the changed lenses, we wondered. Would it lead to a shift in approach as well?

A wildlife researcher pointed out wildlife-human conflict to be the most important issue in the landscape from the conservation perspective. While most people around agreed, the question also was what was it that stuck her after years in the landscape? Or had the scenario changed suddenly? Further discussions revealed that the then recently undertaken socio-economic surveys had brought out the issue in a stark manner. This brings us back to the lens. Is the point here of having looked at it from the livelihood lens as opposed to the wildlife biology lens? Or having listened to multiple narratives and got a picture of the intensity which stories convey? Structured, one-time surveys may find it difficult to capture the impact of loss of food and security. The uncertainty of facing tomorrow in a scenario where months of efforts have been destroyed within a night or of the sheer fear of moving in the dark for ones needs with a tiger lurking around!

Conversations with conservationists based around protected areas brought out crop damage being on the rise in villages adjacent to select protected areas. These are areas where effective management has led to the rise in the herbivore population. In other words control on hunting in and around the protected areas has led to an increase in herbivore population which in turn led to increase in crop damage in the neighbouring villages. Simultaneously there also is a rise in population of the large cats and some of our protected areas may soon have more large cats than can live together in them. These large cats will then need to disperse, like cats do, and when this happens they will interact with humans in human dominated areas. If this hypothesis is true, we will, sooner than later, face conflict of another kind. The question then is whether we are we in a position today to pre-empt (at least to some extent) the conflict and work to minimize the damage?

Can we attempt to understand, discuss and develop location specific designs and work towards them. If not on our own by actively seeking and engaging with partners? This warrants lengthy deliberations with stake-holders some of which may not be pleasant. Conservation like Richard Cowling said is ‘10 % science and 90 % negotiation’. Can we leave these deliberations (negotiations) for someone else to take up? Hope for someone else to mysteriously pop-up and want to do this kind of ‘work’? If we want to work on conflict, on conservation do we today have the option of not engaging? Of not entering into partnerships with those who engage?

While there were more questions we closed the meeting on this note.