The Friction between Humans and Animals is a Social Issue, not an Environmental One
Human-Wildlife Conflict is an unpleasant, often violent interaction between humans and animals. Animals are followed by mobs, tortured and killed. In other cases, crop raiding animals destroy fields and property.
Humans often act in self-defence- but are animals eternally on a rampage, seeking only to harm humans? Why are humans defending themselves when the animal is not attacking?
Animals rarely display animosity to humans. But the common man believes that an animal outside the forest is an animal out to kill. And it is from that dangerous thought-process stems most conflict.
In ‘The Vanishing’ by environmental journalist Prerna Singh Bindra, is described a particularly gruesome lynching of a leopard by a frenzied mob:
In June 2015, a leopard was spotted in Purulia (West Bengal). It was chased, cornered, mobbed. Panicked and terrified, it struck back. You would too, if harassed and thrashed by a frenzied mob of over 3,000. A cat has claws and canines, and a villager or two got injured, none fatally. The forest department team that arrived to help the leopard was woefully outnumbered by the mob. The leopard was lynched, killed, mutilated, paws and tail chopped off. Its battered body was hung from a tree, not unlike a grotesque trophy.
Why People turn to Violence
Prerna Bindra also noted, that as the leopard suffered the greatest agony, onlookers felt great joy, many even holding their mobile phones aloft to film the incident. These details are a testament to the fact that the common man does not flinch at such brutality, so long as it is against an animal (It must be kept in mind that many would not even flinch at violence of such great extent between two humans- due to political, religious, or cultural differences)
But it is not just people who have a role to play in normalising these cruel incidents of human brutality. Media outlets never fail to sensationalise the mere existence of an animal within human territories. Stories with titles similar to ‘Elephant goes on a rampage within district A’ and ‘Leopard creates panic in City B’ are common, as these stories are more likely to get attention than ‘Leopard enters village for a few minutes before returning to forest’.
There are situations where people genuinely feel threatened, despite the animal not meaning any harm. This is only due to a lack of awareness on animals, a lack of knowledge that an animal, much like humans, would like to avoid as much violence and conflict as possible.
There are actually human victims- those whose crops have been destroyed by a wandering herd of elephants. Despite their violence not being justified, their anger certainly is. In such cases, the government’s immediate response should be to provide compensation/aid (medical, financial), and in certain extreme cases, relocate the animals to another secure area. Such aid is provided in approximately 50% of cases of Man-Wildlife Conflict. Those who do not receive aid, resort to violence against the animals.
In this image, from a report on 14 elephant deaths by poisoning in Assam, depicts a sub-adult tusker poisoned in a crop field of the Holleswar village. The words ‘Paddy Thief Laden’ scrawled on its corpse in Assamese, a comparison to the raiding of crops by elephants to an act of terrorism akin to those of Osama Bin Laden.
Those words, scribbled in chalk, make it clear that these elephants had raided some crops. Due to the inaction of the government, the farmers took it into their own hands to get rid of the threat, in the only method that they knew and could afford. For a vulnerable species like the Indian Elephant, 14 deaths is a huge loss. Had the government financed the construction of barriers to prevent the elephants from entering, these deaths could have been prevented.
However, there also are a generous number of cases where animals are attacked by mobs for entertainment. In the photo given below, the description by Sanctuary Asia noted:
The ignorance and bloodlust of mobs that attack herds for fun, is compounded by the plight of those that actually suffer damage to land, life and property by wandering elephants and the utter indifference of the central and state government to recognise the crisis that is at hand.
Protected Areas and Corridors
One of the major reasons for the unfortunate encounters are the lack of corridors. Corridors are broad strips of forested land which connect a number of forests. However, corridors are not exclusively forest- they may consist of wetlands, grasslands, and other habitats where animals roam. A connection between two wetlands, a forest and a grassland, etc. can also be considered corridors.
In India, there are 726 protected areas, comprising 4.9 percent of the total land of the country. 29% of Royal Bengal Tigers in India live outside protected areas. Tigers spend much of their time travelling across their vast territories. A female tiger’s territory ranges from 15–20 square kilometres, while a male tiger’s territory may go up to 100 square kilometres, depending on its status. As these territories often extend outside protected areas, corridors help prevent tigers from straying into human territories and thus prevent conflict.
In the case of the Indian Leopard, the big-cat with the largest range both globally and in India. In the Wildlife Institute of India Survey, they estimated that there are 12,000–14,000 leopards in India. However, only leopards in Tiger habitats were counted, despite the range of leopards in India being far greater. Prerna Singh Bindra notes that in the decade preceding 2012, 4 leopards were killed per week. She goes on that this statistic was only the detected skins, and that the actual number of deaths would be much higher. For every tiger skin, approximately 6 leopard skins are seized, and 10 times more leopard skins would be smuggled out.
Similarly, 67% of elephants and 52% of blackbucks are not residents of protected areas. But the worst fate befalls the Indian Grey Wolf and the Gangetic Dolphin, among relatively popular species of Indian Wildlife. Almost a 100% of their habitat does not come under any Protected Areas. The Indian Grey Wolf mainly resides in grasslands, and grasslands, for some reason, are not given the same priority as forests, despite them being more biodiverse, and serving more ecological functions.
Corridors can help solve problems other than conflict, too. Aquatic animals are almost never involved in conflict- but overfishing and water pollution are great threats to them. The notification of more aquatic Protected Areas and corridors connecting them would be a great step towards conservation of animals which live in water.
For the Gangetic Dolphin, only the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary in Bihar is a notified Protected Area, despite the animals being found along almost the entire stretch of the Ganga. If the National Aquatic Animal of India suffers such a fate, the condition of other lesser-known species of freshwater wildlife, several of which are critically-endangered due to water-pollution in Indian rivers, can only be left to be imagined.
A Social Issue, not an Environmental One
Humans in the past shared space with the wild. Even today, a large section of Rural Indians are neighbours to the country’s wild inhabitants.
However, the alienation of humans from wildlife has led to an increasing disconnect with land, forest, and the inhabitants of the wild. Prerna Singh Bindra writes:
In urban areas, nature is increasingly the ‘other’, outside of us; and rarely appreciated unless we can ‘control’ it- like a manicured garden, or animals in a zoo. In cities, people have been abused and beaten for being kind to a dog; perceive cattle as vermin as it clogs up the roads; and spray beehives with pesticides lest a bee stings their kid.
Animals are not admired for their beauty and contributions to the environment, but rather feared for their power. They do not mean humans harm. They deserve to be respected as fellow inhabitants of the planet. The ignorance of the general public to this is what drives friction.
An animal’s invisibility is the only thing that can protect them from humans. For many, an animal’s mere presence in a territory that was once its own, but now belongs to humans, is enough reason to attack it.
There is a misconception that humans are inherently violent. However, humans have coexisted with animals for a long time, killing only to sustain their own, immediate physical needs- food, shelter, etc. Brutality and abuse of animals is only a development that occurred as we alienated ourself from the natural world. Andrew Collier’s rebuttal to a popular argument for capitalism explains this situation, too:
“To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough.”
To look at the modern human and conclude humans are inherently violent is wrong, and would disregard thousands of years in history where humans and animals co-existed, only harming each other for survival.
Conclusions
There are those who suffer due to animals raiding their crops, injuring them etc., but due to the ignorance of the government in providing aid/compensation, they resort to violence against the animals.
A majority of animals live outside protected areas. Recognising corridors as protected areas would help many endangered species receive at least some of the protection they deserve.
India sees approximately 80,000 cases of man-animal conflict every year. The establishment of officially recognised and protected corridors could significantly reduce that number, for animals will not have to pass through human territories, and in most cases, get attacked for it, just to reach another forest for resources- food, water or mates.
Brutality against animals during conflict between humans and animals is normalised by both people and the media. It is a social issue, not an environmental issue. Addressing this issue could go a long way in containing friction between humans and animals.