JOIN USIndo-German team to study man-wildlife conflict in state
India is in the process of bagging Rs 30 crore (four million Euro) grant from the German government to mitigate the human-wildlife conflict.
To ascertain the feasibility of future project elements, an Indo-German mission team, constituted by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) will be visiting Karnataka.
The four-member team comprising three wildlife conservationists will visit Thithimathi in Kodagu on August 10 and parts of Nagarhole National Park and Bandipur National Park on August 11 to study the prevalent human-elephant conflict.
The team has already undertaken field visits to Uttarakhand and Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
People in many parts of Uttarakhand are facing conflicts with monkeys, leopards and elephants, while Mumbaikars are facing leopard attacks. The team will also be traveling to Kolkata and Jaldapara National Park in northern West Bengal, to study the persisting human-elephant conflict. Forest officers from Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand too will be present during the Kolkata visit.
Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun will give its expertise on population control of the wild animals.
Dr V B Mathur, Director, WII told Deccan Herald that the MoEFCC in partnership with the German Development Cooperation (through GIZ) has been implementing various Technical Cooperation (TC) projects in areas of biodiversity conservation, climate change and environmental management.
During the Indo-German consultations in May, the MoEFCC requested a new TC project titled 'Human-wildlife conflict mitigation in India’.
An appraisal of the planned TC is being conducted between August 4 and 24, where design, content and organisational structure will be prepared for the new TC project. The entire mission is being funded by the German government, said Dr Mathur.
Instead of sterilisation or culling, the MoEFCC is now looking at a new measure. Mathur said the WII had recommended immunocontraception, to prevent fertilisation. “There are no ethical issues involved here. However, this has to be tested and validated,” he added.
The team
The mission team comprises Dr Stefan Mann, Consultant (Mission Leader); Dr Vidya Athreya, Wildlife Conservation Society, India; and Ajay Desai, independent expert on human-wildlife conflict management. Mann, who is based in Germany, has 21 years of experience in issues of forest and land use policies and conflict resolutions.
Athreya has been working on human wildlife interactions since 2003 and her focus has been on large carnivores such as leopards, wolves and tigers. Desai has over 33 years of experience in elephant conservation and human-elephant conflict mitigation work across much of the elephant ranges in Asia.