Co-adaptation is a helpful technique to ensure that our wildlife is able to adapt to human activities and vice versa. One example is buildings on stilts to make them inaccessible to elephants
The visual of an elephant with a tracking collar barging into the safety of a gated house and trampling a person has gone viral and has exposed the elephant in the room, both literally and metaphorically. Human casualties are the most extreme and unfortunate outcomes of shared spaces between people and wildlife. Apart from human deaths, the costs of injuries, crop losses, economic damages, and opportunity costs pose a huge burden for families who share space with wild animals. Yet, despite being the most populous country in the world, we are still among the most biodiverse. So how are we able to balance the livelihood and food security of 140 crore people with our biodiversity conservation goals? Perhaps the answer lies in co-adaptation between people and wildlife.
Co-adaptation refers to the idea of people and animals modifying their own behaviour to navigate the presence of one another. In India, people have historically co-adapted with wildlife through various mechanisms, be it cultural, behavioural or societal. For instance, species such as elephants, tigers, snakes, and even crocodiles are an intricate part of our folklore, culture, and religion. Species such as leopards, wild pigs, and elephants have adapted to human-modified landscapes through anthropogenic food, shared habitats and/or learning to navigate human activities. For instance, despite the high pressures of development and land-use change, India still harbours 65 per cent of all wild Asian elephants with 75-80 per cent of their range being outside our national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
While human co-adaptation techniques have been largely successful historically, we reduced our dependency on such practices because elephants and leopards were hunted until they were on the brink of extinction prior to the enactment of the Indian Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Now, due to successful conservation efforts, we may be able to adopt our earlier practices to prevent damages to life and property. For instance, buildings near the forests of north-eastern India were erected on stilts to serve the dual purpose to making them flood proof and to make them inaccessible to elephants. Over time, this was replaced by structures on the ground level that were easily exploited by elephants to access stored food. Crop losses in some areas were negotiated through beliefs that such losses are a blessing from gods and would promise a better harvest next year. The choice of crops was made such that it did not attract elephants. Either that, or local groups were mobilised to stand guard over crops like paddy during the harvest season. These measure were undertaken because wildlife species do not understand human-made boundaries and stop-gap solutions like unplanned capture-translocations are often counterproductive, like with the male elephant in Wayanad.
Kerala’s Wayanad and Idduki districts were in the news for a few human-animal conflicts — elephant swallowing a food bomb, damage to crops and property, and in the most extreme case, loss of human lives. The geographical location of Wayanad, surrounded by Protected Areas predisposes the region for a high overlap between people and wildlife such as elephants and tigers. Hence, proactive measures are required to prevent negative impacts of these species on people and vice-versa. Monitoring individual elephants for their behaviour is vital to preempt negative encounters. If a certain elephant regularly displays behaviour that may jeopardise human life, such animals need to be removed from that area. Management decisions such as monitoring, deterring, or capturing need to be based on individual animal behaviour and physiological condition (musth status for instance). Regular monitoring of elephants in Gudalur, for instance has highlighted that only a small proportion of them pose a threat to people even as the entire population often takes the blame.
Furthermore, data systems based on the analysis of trends and circumstances of negative encounters between people and elephants must be put in place to identify vulnerable groups of people and vulnerable locations. Once these facets have been identified, locally relevant and acceptable measures need to be put in place to prevent damage. The next important step would be to promote coordination between Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala with respect to sharing information on animal movement and real-time data on human casualties and economic losses. Joint operations and training for the forest departments would likely yield positive results to this end.
The media too plays a crucial role shaping public perception towards wildlife. While reports on damage due to conflicts feature prominently, news of co-adaptation between people and wildlife that results in more frequent but less intense interactions fail to garner attention and hence, is often ignored by people. Media can play a positive and proactive role in dissipating information in safer shared spaces on ways to minimise damage, as highlighted by the positive engagement between media personnel, forest department, local communities and conservation agencies in Mumbai, a city that shares its space with leopards. Other local stakeholders, be it local civil society groups or district administration can play pivotal roles in the management of negative interactions between people and wildlife. Sharing safety protocols, fast-tracking the installation of street lights and toilets and implementing early warning measures like public communication systems can help avert unfortunate incidents that jeopardise human lives and livelihoods. Overall, managing conflicts with wild animals needs a concerted and cross-sectoral approach that equitably involves all sections of society to find shared solutions that balance human safety and ecological security.
Written by Aritra Kshettry
Source: Indian Express, 2/03/24
