By Rasheed Kappan

A leopard killed inside a tea estate in Dibrugarh, screams a headline from Assam in November. In distant Mysore down South, another leopard kills a student and attacks a biker and forest staffer in the same month. A wild elephant tramples a sixty-year-old man in Kerala’s Palakkad to death, adding to the State’s record of highest human casualties in such conflicts over the last four years.

These deadly man-animal conflicts are now in sharp focus as debates and protests intensify over the Supreme Court directive in June to earmark 1 km buffer zones and Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZ) around wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. But does this amount to escalation?

The conflicts are often attributed to the fragmentation of forest areas, forcing animals to stray into human settlements and farmlands. In the last financial year alone, Kerala recorded 27 human deaths in conflict with wild elephants. This broke the 2016-17 record of 26 deaths caused by both elephants and wild boars. Tigers and leopards continued to kill cattle, mimicking a trend in States with large forest areas countrywide.

Inevitably, shrinking natural habitats and the rising human population have triggered a spike in man-animal conflicts as interactions rise over space for food and water. Scientific studies have established that fragmentation of forests deprives wild animals of their natural resources, forcing them to move out, affecting livestock, plantations and human lives. Fragmentation creates patches, disrupting the connectivity of forests.

The science is clear. But as protests by conflict-affected communities grow and governments and forest departments struggle with compensations and enforcement of controversial laws, wildlife conservationists are seeking a balance.

In a nutshell, this is what they say: “Do not evict tribal communities and forest dwellers who have had a symbiotic relationship with animals for centuries. Unlike encroachers, the tribes do not see the deaths as conflicts. The cases might be perceived as rising due to amplified attention by social media. Making laws without a vision will get us nowhere.”

Read full story https://theprobe.in/man-animal-conflict-rising-deaths-but-ignored-realities/