Human-animal conflict is clear & present danger, and India can’t afford to ignore it

Increasing human and animal population, shrinking forests etc. have made the conflict inevitable. But it’s not as though there are no solutions.

New Delhi: Killings, retaliatory killings, battles for territory, battles for survival.

We aren’t talking about a political battleground, we are referring to a deadly conflict between human beings and animals in India, which has the potential to turn into a full-blown war. And what’s more, the government has only just begun to take note.

Last week, when six-year old tigress Avni, accused of killing 13 human beings, was shot dead by a private hunter’s son in the Pandharkawada region of Maharashtra, there was an outpouring of grief, anger, and protests from several quarters.

Is retaliation the only answer to human-animal conflict? As the human population grows, forest cover shrinks, and humans and animals begin to compete and jostle for the same, limited resources, do we have the necessary wherewithal to contain the problem?

Just a day after Avni was killed, another tigress in Uttar Pradesh was run over and beaten to death by angry villagers after she mauled a 50-year-old man. On the same day, a leopard snuck into the Gujarat secretariat and the sprawling complex had to be cordoned off.

A week before that, seven elephants died of electrocution in Odisha — a state often known as a “graveyard” for elephants. An adult female elephant was deliberately electrocuted in the state’s Rourkela forest division for frequently damaging crops in the area. The killing was labelled a “revenge killing” — an increasingly common phenomenon as human-animal conflict gradually becomes the order of the day.

According to the Environment Ministry, 1,608 human beings were killed between 2014 and 2017 due to this conflict — an average of more than one human being every day.

Of these, most lives are claimed by tigers, elephants, snakes, leopards and bears.

There is no government data on the deaths of animals due to human-animal conflict.

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