Predictive framework for human-wildlife conflict

The Assam government’s choice to raise the compensation for deaths caused by human-wildlife conflict, including Human Elephant Conflict (HEC), from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, along with higher payments for crop losses, is a good step towards helping those affected by these conflicts. Sustainable resolution of human-wildlife conflict, however, requires a stronger preventive strategy rooted in landscape-level planning to address the new and emerging ecological drivers of these conflicts and effectively prevent their occurrence. If wildlife habitats outside protected areas keep getting broken up by highways, railways, power lines, and security posts without proper ecological protections, it will put more pressure on wildlife movement, leading to more negative interactions between humans and wildlife, especially with wild elephant herds. This situation calls for strict enforcement of the mitigation measures recommended by the National Board of Wildlife while granting approval to the development projects that involve forest diversion and fragmentation of wildlife habitat. Amid the escalation of human-elephant conflict (HEC), the recent straying of tigers into human settlements around protected areas in the state, such as Kaziranga National Park, Manas National Park, and Orang National Park, signals mounting ecological stress that is pushing these big cats to leave their safe habitats in search of prey and undisturbed corridors. As strayed tigers kill livestock animals, and incidents of attacking and killing humans have also been recorded, preventing recurrence is crucial to strengthening the safety of humans and their livestock while undertaking ecological measures to secure the tiger habitats before it becomes a full-blown conflict similar to HEC. The rise in human-wildlife conflict increases the risk even more for endangered wildlife, as affected communities, in a bid to safeguard their lives and livelihoods, indulge in retaliatory actions such as chasing the strayed animals back into the forest or outside their village boundaries, sometimes by pelting stones and causing injuries that leave the wild animals traumatised or vulnerable to further conflict. Often, delays in the arrival of trained forest personnel, who are responsible for guiding the animals back into their habitat, lead people to resort to their methods of driving the animals away using risky and unregulated techniques, which in turn increases the intensity of the conflict. Strengthening communication between the Forest Department and affected villages is essential to close the response gap and avert risky retaliatory actions often taken by people in absence of timely support from the department. Once a wild elephant herd or a stray tiger enters a human settlement, driving them back to their safe habitat is a challenging task even for the trained forest officials and personnel. Often, it extends to several days and sometimes even weeks, as maximum care must be taken to ensure that no harm is done to the animals or anyone in the affected villages and towns. Lessons learned from these prolonged interventions highlight gaps and challenges in response planning and the shortage of decentralised response teams. The pragmatic option to reduce the risks of such prolonged operations is to strengthen landscape planning for habitat restoration for wildlife populations affected by infrastructure project development and the encroachment of forest land by illegal settlers. The encroached area is much bigger than the forest area diverted for infrastructure projects. Additionally, while there are adequate checks and balances in place for linear infrastructure projects, the ongoing shortcomings in enforcement remain a concern; if forest area encroachments are not addressed, they can lead to significant destruction of additional forest areas as the population of encroachers increases, resulting in more people clearing forests for settlement. The eviction operations initiated by the state government to clear the forest encroachments are praiseworthy and crucial interventions for the restoration of ecology at the landscape level. The return of wildlife to degraded forests after the removal of encroachments from forest land in several districts highlights the stress of shrinking safe spaces, which is affecting wildlife populations and pushing them into human settlements on the forest fringe. Building awareness among the populations living on the forest fringe about the urgency to monitor and curb forest encroachment is pivotal to the implementation of a landscape-level strategy for preventing human-wildlife conflict. Active participation of the forest fringe population, especially those affected by the conflict, in consultations organised to improve landscape-level planning needs to be prioritised to ensure a bottom-up approach. Updating the landscape planning strategy based on ecological changes is critical to guaranteeing its relevance in addressing new and emerging drivers of human-wildlife conflict and effectively preventing escalation. Quick disbursal of compensation support to the affected population is also critical to boosting their confidence and trust in the conflict mitigation strategy and landscape-level ecological restoration initiatives taken by the government. Upgrading the strategy to make it adaptable to climate change is essential for ensuring long-term resilience and sustainability in the conflict-management system.  Anticipating emerging conflict risks proves more beneficial than merely reacting to them.