1,700 Indians killed by tigers, elephants in last 3 years: Environment ministry

More than 1,700 Indians including 74 from Karnataka were killed by wild tigers and elephants in the last three years, Union Environment Ministry informed the Parliament on Monday, flagging the concerns in mitigating human-animal conflicts in forest rich states.

On the other side of the spectrum, more than 230 tigers and elephants were killed by Indians in the same period, exposing the gaps to provide a secure habitat to India’s national and heritage animals.

While 29 tigers became the victim of poaching between 2019-20 and 2021-22, the same number of elephants were killed by illegal hunters between 2018-19 and 2020-21. In addition, 222 jumbos were electrocuted in the same period while 11 died from poisoning.

Sixty eight tigers have died due to natural causes in the last three fiscal years, but surprisingly in 197 cases, the reasons are still “under scrutiny”. This includes 22 such cases in 2019-20 and 71 in 2020-21.

Read | Wild tiger numbers higher than previously thought

Experts say the reasons for a rise in human-animal conflicts range from habitat loss and growth of wild animal population to changing cropping patterns that attract wild animals to farmlands, and movement of wild animals from forests to human dominated landscapes for food.

Other reasons for the rise in human-animal conflict were movement of human beings to forests for illegal collection of forest produce and habitat degradation due to growth of invasive alien species, said Ashwini Kumar Choubey, the Minister of State for Environment.

A thin silver line is a marginal reduction in elephant casualties due to train accidents. There were 18 such deaths in 2018-19, which came down to 12 in 2020-21.

The top three states recording the maximum number of human deaths by elephants are Odisha (322), Jharkhand (292) and Assam (229) between 2019-20 and 2021-22. In the same period Tamil Nadu and Karnataka logged 152 and 69 such deaths respectively. Also five Karnataka residents were killed by tigers in the same period.

Karnataka is also among the top five states that recorded the maximum number of jumbo deaths due to electrocution with Odisha topping the list with 41 cases between 2018-19 and 2020-21. Others are Tamil Nadu (34), Assam (33), Karnataka (26) and West Bengal (19).