Kerala’s Wildlife Amendment Bill: Conservation or political optics?

In Kerala, forests and human settlements exist in close and complex proximity. Beyond agricultural losses and property damage, between 2016 and January 2025, 919 human deaths and 8,967 injuries due to wildlife encounters have been recorded. While negative interactions between people and wildlife demand policy responses informed by science, the proposed Wildlife Protection (Kerala Amendment) Bill, 2025, substitutes haste and political expediency for evidence and legal prudence. 

Kerala’s attempt to amend the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 – a central piece of legislation – opens an aggressive front by allowing the state to authorise the killing, capture or translocation of wild animals found in public places where people gather or in residential areas. Not only does this override the Centre’s authority to make such decisions, but the broad and vague language used throughout the bill invites misinterpretation and misuse. It lacks the specificity that distinguishes sound conservation from unscientific removal of animals. 

Concerningly, the bill defines “residential area” as any geographical area where people reside. In a state like Kerala, where 30% of the land is under forest cover and over 300 villages house some 70 lakh people along forest fringes, few areas would fall outside this definition. This could open the door to an indiscriminate and potentially widespread culling, a scenario that runs counter to the fundamental spirit and intent of the Wildlife Protection Act. 

Further, the bill defines an animal as “dangerous to human life” if it has either attacked a person outside a forest or is merely “found” in a residential area outside the boundaries of a forest or protected area. This effectively grants the state a pre-emptive strike, bypassing subjective assessments. Stating that an animal in a residential area is “dangerous to human life” is a dangerous presumption. Animals, such as leopards, snakes, elephants, or even birds, may be merely traversing through a residential area without posing an immediate threat.

The bill also inserts a provision on population management by presenting relocation as a prospective solution. Decades of data from across the country have demonstrated that removal and relocation do not resolve conflict, are expensive, and may in fact exacerbate the problem. 

These provisions risk weaponising a law meant to protect wildlife, while offering little in terms of long-term solutions. 

While the proposed provisions are contentious, the legal validity of the amendment itself is questionable. While the ‘protection of wild animals and birds’ is a subject on the concurrent list, allowing both Centre and state to legislate, the bill contains provisions that are inconsistent with the central Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (WLPA), therefore attracting the constitutional doctrine of repugnancy. Article 254 says that where a state law is repugnant to a central law on a subject on the concurrent list, the central law prevails, and the state law is void to the extent of repugnancy.

There are several instances where the doctrine of repugnancy will apply in this amendment. Firstly, the insertion permitting the Chief Wildlife Warden, upon a report from the District Collector or Chief Conservator of Forest, “without delay” to permit/cause the killing of a Schedule-I animal found in a public/residential area after an attack is a red flag. This can conflict with the central WLPA proviso that forbids killing orders unless the CWLW is satisfied that the animal cannot be captured, tranquilised, or translocated, i.e., the central law requires attempts at non-lethal measures before killing.

Secondly, the bill amends Section 62 to empower the State Government to declare Schedule-II animals to be “vermin”. The WLPA presently vests that notification power in the Central Government alone. The state assuming an overriding power is incompatible and inconsistent with the central act.

Lastly, another repugnancy arises in the proposed delisting of the bonnet macaque from Schedule I to Schedule II. The schedules are allocations in a central statute intended to maintain uniformity across the country. Unilateral state reclassification risks direct inconsistency with the central list and therefore is untenable. 

The odds favour the law’s inoperability, which begs the question of the timing of the bill. Kerala heads into local body polls in November-December and Assembly elections not long after. Conflict with wildlife is a visceral, emotive issue in rural constituencies. By promising decisive action, the government positions itself as the protector of lives and livelihoods. But this is electoral optics, not conservation strategy. 

What the bill really does is reassure anxious communities in the short term, while ignoring underlying drivers of conflict. The Wildlife Protection (Kerala Amendment) Bill, 2025, is not a solution. It is a short-term political fix wrapped in the language of protection. For Kerala’s people and its wildlife alike, that is a dangerous path.

(The writer is a wildlife research and policy specialist, Humane World for Animals India)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.