Post date: Aug 25, 2017 4:52:16 PM
That sounds like a weird question and how does it matter anyway how people feel about peafowl?
Well, that's the question which has led to my frequent travels across states at different field sites in the past six years.
Most humans connect with nature in different ways- some people take time out of their routine schedule to connect with nature and see wildlife while for many others the wildlife comes to their doorstep (whether they like it or not!). Human encounter with natural world, especially wild animals can be direct or indirect and these encounters leave many impressions on both humans as well as wild animals.
For those people who live with wildlife around them all the time, not all interactions with the wildlife might be pleasant. Can humans and wildlife co-exist peacefully? Can they share space/ other resources? Are humans and other animals competing for few resources? Can we make the co-existence amicable for both humans and wildlife? Those questions are becoming more urgent to address everyday as we hear more wild animals venturing into human habitation and humans clearing/ capturing more and more forest spaces for various reasons.
We think human-wildlife interactions happen in remote jungle areas or rural areas- but they can happen right in the middle of the city too! There is a whole lot of "wild life"- insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals- trying to "adjust" themselves near or around humans. If you look around carefully, you will find them in semi-urban, even urban areas. So we "share" (or should share) the space and resources with wild-life even in urban areas. What are the consequences of such "sharing" for human and non-human animals? How are their lives, habits being impacted? Is there a "fair" sharing or is there a conflict? I got interested in these questions and want to study both sides- the human side of story as well as the story from wild life's perspective.
So I started understanding human side of the story by visiting urban, semi-urban and rural areas where people encounter peafowl on regular basis- be it a farm in rural area or a eco-tourism resort where people come just to watch these magnificent birds or an urban campus where peafowl have been sharing their daily routines with hustle and bustle of the city life- morning joggers, enthusiastic photographers, indifferent but scary traffic passing by and animal lovers who feed them tidbits.