A deadly conflict is underway between India's growing masses and its wildlife, confined to the ever-shrinking forests and grasslands, with data showing that around one person has been killed every day for the past three years by roaming tigers or rampaging elephants.
Statistics released this week by India’s Environment Ministry count a total 1,144 people killed between April 2014 and May 2017.
That breaks down to 426 human deaths in fiscal 2014-15, and 446 killed the following year. The ministry released only a partial count for 2016-17 of 259 killed by elephants up to February 2017, along with 27 killed by tigers through May.
Conflict is already one of the biggest conservation challenges. In India, it is particularly acute because of the high human population...The shrinking of good quality habitats and access of the animals to movement corridors are absolutely critical for India’s conservation efforts and the future of its iconic mammals.Belinda Wright, founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
That population of 1.3 billion is still growing, and as it does, it is increasingly encroaching into the country's traditional wild spaces and animal sanctuaries, where people compete with wildlife for food and other resources.
The growth of human settlements is often seen as economic development. But for some who are living on the edge of wildlife borders, this development can come at a high cost.
Of the 1,052 lives claimed by elephants in the last three years, many had simply been in the way when the pachyderms wandered out of jungles in search of vegetation and raided farmers’ crops. Wildlife experts say these conflicts have increased as elephants increasingly find their usual corridors blocked by highways, railway tracks and factories.
The human conflict with tigers has gradually increased since the 1970s, when India launched a nationwide tiger conservation program that carved out sanctuaries in national parks and made it a crime to kill a big cat. Though methods for counting tigers have changed, census evidence suggests the number of tigers has since gone up, from about 1,800 then to 2,226 in 2014.
But the increase in tiger numbers hasn't been met with a proportional increase in habitat, activists say.
Tigers need space for breeding as they move across wildlife parks and sanctuaries.Belinda Wright
Meanwhile, India's elephants and tigers are also some of the most hunted animals in the country — sought for their ivory tusks or bones that are sold on the black market for use in traditional Chinese medicine, without any evidence that they have an effect. Elephants are also threatened by speeding trains.
(This article was first published by AP and has been republished with permission.)
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