Animals’ battle for survival puts humans at risk

Last Sunday, when Odisha farmer Jugal Kishore Bhat went to his field, he had no idea what was in store for him. As he was working, a wild elephant attacked, tossed him up from behind and instantly killed the 60-year-old from Delang area of Puri district.

Three others including Chaitan Sahu, 45, and Makar Palei, 65, who were outside their houses early morning were also killed by the same elephant.

“Four persons were killed and three were injured by an elephant, which entered residential areas of Bhubaneswar and attacked people. The elephant came from Chandaka Wildlife Sanctuary and moved towards Delang,” H S Upadhyay, Odisha’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, admitted.

This is the latest in a series of human-animal conflicts that are becoming frequent. In the last five years, nearly 2,500 people lost their lives to tiger and elephant attacks. From leopards in Dehradun to lions in Junagadh, there’s no dearth of such cases.

It’s ironical that India’s success in Project Tiger in a way increases the conflict.

“With rising numbers, the tigers moved outside the protected area resulting in more chance encounters with humans. From Corbett to Tadoba and Bandhavgarh — it’s the same story everywhere,” Bilal Habib, a senior scientist at the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India specialising in human-animal conflict told DH.

Nearly 40% of the lions in Saurashtra-Gir-Somnath, Junagadh and Amreli districts live outside the protected forests, resulting in conflicts. According to the Gujarat forest department, 55 people were killed and over 500 injured between 2013 and 2019.

Nearly 19,000 cattle deaths have been reported in the past five years as the lions developed a habit of hunting in the farms for easy prey. The change in the habit, according to a recent Wildlife Institute of India study, is due to the infamous baiting practice popular in the Gir National Park to attract tourists.

Even though 137 persons were booked in more than 40 such cases between 2014 and 2019, the tendency of luring the lions with easy meat continues, turning the predators lazy.

On the downside, it leads to increased lion movement closer to human habitation, angering people and seeking revenge after a lion attack. One such attack took place on February 7, when 45-year-old Dasabhai Jadav was mauled by a lioness while working on a farm.

“Lion attacks anger the villagers, who want to retaliate. There are instances of poisoning and severe beating of lions by farmers after such attacks. Although we compensate and counsel them after such attacks, the villagers find it difficult to remain silent,” said a top forest officer.

Loss of habitat is the most known contributing factor. In Tamil Nadu, the hilly districts of Nilgiris and Theni, and parts of western Tamil Nadu like Pollachi are prone to such clashes due to illegal construction of houses and resorts across an elephant corridor.

More than 200 people were killed by wild elephants in the southern state between 2014 and 2019. Majority of these deaths took place near Coimbatore, Pollachi and in the Nilgiris.

Nilgiris Collector J Innocent Divya, under whose supervision the district administration identified 821 illegal buildings including resorts in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, said the habitat shrunk even though the elephant numbers had increased.

“Animals usually don’t venture out during the day. But humans don’t keep up with the timings followed by animals, resulting in a conflict. With the habitat reducing due to new constructions, the conflict has increased,” she told DH.

“If they sense the presence of humans, the elephants turn cautious and walk slowly. Sometimes this is the trigger for a conflict,” said an animal- rights activist.

Blocking of wildlife corridors and encroachments is the prime reason for rising man-animal conflicts in Kerala too, noted M N Jayachandran, a Kerala State Animal Welfare Board member.

Rise in temperature was also an important cause, pointed out Rituraj Phukan from the Green Guard Nature Organisation, a non-governmental outfit in Assam. This aspect is often overlooked even though wildlife habitats have degraded over the years due to changes in weather patterns, leading to increased straying of animals from protected areas. “Changes in rainfall patterns and warming have caused widespread vegetation changes, affecting fodder and water availability. For instance, the elephant habitats on the foothills of Karbi are being overtaken by invasive creepers and shrubs that ruin the grasslands.

This results in more jumbo intrusion in the human settlements and farmlands. Due to the fragmented landscape, the wild animals are not able to reach areas of abundant fodder and water without encountering humans,” said Phukan.

Out of space

Infrastructure projects and urbanisation compound the problem. The former puts the animals at the receiving end whereas spreading of populous cities to new areas lead to situations like leopards straying into residential colonies or their descent on a mega-city like Mumbai—the world's only metropolis that houses a national park within its boundary. The Sanjay Gandhi National Park witnessed several episodes of conflict between humans and leopards, with the most intense ones being between 2002- 04.

Such conflicts were fuelled by the practice of trapping and relocating the spotted cats. Rather than reducing conflict, it led to an increase in such cases as the territory emptied by the trapped animal attracted other leopards unfamiliar with the area. The situation was aggravated when the trapped leopard, traumatised by the process, was released in unfamiliar territory and it attempted to return to its home range. While the practice stopped following a directive from the Union EnvironmentandForestMinistry, the forest department still faces pressure from the locals, who think trapping and relocation as a solution to such conflicts. Highways, railway links and power transmission lines pierce the forested landscape creating fragments within the protected areas.

Some of the prominent examplesareNationalHighway72and74 crossingRajaji NationalPark; NH67 and 212 passing through Bandipur; NH 209 bisecting Sathyamangalam; NH 6 and 7 intersecting at least six tiger corridors in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and NH715 (NH37) through Kaziranga. “Deer, bears and other animals are mowed down by speeding vehicles on the Livingwithleopards in Mumbai 65-km stretch of the highway that passes through Kaziranga. Destruction of habitats due to mining in the Karbi Anglong hills and unauthorised electric fencing are other reasons of animal deaths,” director of the park, P Shivakumar told DH. The authorities introduced speed restrictions on the highway (30 kmph) during the flood season and constructed artificial highland inside the park’s core area, where the animals can take shelter during the deluge.

Flawed plans

Experts point out that speed restrictions imposed on vehicles and trains are often flouted. On the Palakkad-Coimbatore railway route in Kerala, 27 elephants were killed in 19 years, the latest being in December 2019.

North Bengal, too, sees such deaths frequently. But barely any mitigation measures exist in the jungles. After a decade-long legal battle with the National Highway Authority of India, when nine underpasses were constructed on the Kanha-Penchcorridor.The animals quickly adapted to the structures to move from one side of the road to another. “Within a period of nine months, we demonstrated 5,000 animal crossing. Now such passes are constructed at Rajaji National Park for the elephants,” said Habib. Roads and railway lines claimed the lives of at least 16 tigers across India over the last few years. Over 150 wild elephants died while crossing railway tracks across the country in the last 8-10 years, said Wildlife Conservation Trust, Mumbai in a January 2018 statement.

There is scant data available about other equally rare, endangered and threatened species of amphibians, birds (owls, nightjars, horned larks) and reptiles (king cobra, python) which die in thousands. Mortalities of leopard, sloth bears, wild dogs, wolves, jackals, hyenas, Indian fox, honey badgers, otters, langur monkeys, Indian gaur, spotted deer, barking deer, nilgai and sambar go unrecorded. “The two thumb rules are no new road projects through the jungles and mitigation measures for animal move mention the existing stretches,” saidHabib. The issue is nearly 55,000 km of roads pass through the forests, but underpasses exist for only one road. The expanding number of conflict cases prompted the Assam government to set up15 anti-depredation squads comprising 50 staff equipped with 12 pump action guns and rubber bullets. The experts, however, favour forest rejuvenation and curb against encroachment instead of any retaliatory mechanisms. “Policymakers have to think out of the box for conservation out of the protected areas. Unless the animals outside the protected areas become a source of income for people, conflicts will continue,” summed up Habib.

(With inputs from Mrityunjay Bose, E TB Sivapriyan, Arjun Raghunath, SatishJha and SumirKarmakar)