WCB Field Notes

Conflicts to Co-existence

A lesson learning field experience of a wildlife student

Shailesh Desai, MSc (Zoology)

Conflicts is a major issue of biodiversity conservation nowadays. Human-wildlife conflicts are escalating and becoming a highly sensitive issue when the species involved has conservation importance. Conflicts emerge due to competition, sharing of resources and sometime as a retaliatory action by human. In all the cases, both human and wildlife suffers and become hostile for each other. Intolerance of a man towards wildlife become an important driver of conflicts. Crop damage by wildlife is a major conflict issue in almost entire world and this need to be addressed and understand holistically, if we really want to conserve our natural resources and wildlife.

As a student of wildlife and a conservationist by my nature, I am trying to learn about human-wildlife conflicts, their causes and how people develop the mitigation measures to control these conflicting situations. The area where I work is located on the fringe of the desert of Kachchh and the farmers have several issues including quality of soil, scarcity of water, unpredictable climate, progressing desert and the crop damage due to wildlife. These all together create a larger impact on their income, social status and tolerance towards the wildlife. Although this tough natural condition, the locals are happily struggling and finding the alternatives to live with the wildlife and harsh climate. During my field I interacted with farmers and came to know that among the wild animals, wild boar, blue bull, Wildass and Chinkara are seldom visits their farms and destroy the crops at different stages. As per few of the respondents, more than 40% of the land is abandoned due to the high risk of crop damage and unpredictable climate. This may result into a serious problem of food security in future. Even farmers are changing their crop pattern, growing unpalatable crops and using several interesting conventional methods to keep wild animals away from their farm.

Although people are poor with money but not with the heart, while in the field, they often offered me overwhelming hospitality and warmth. As student of wildlife science and as human I learned three important things from the people of this area. 1] How to survive and protect our assets in harsh conditions and natural calamities 2] How to protect the crops from wildlife in such areas and 3] how to live with wildlife and cultivate the essence of co-existence. I feel there is an urgent need to develop some modern techniques of crop protection by using the local, first hand crop protection methods and aiding the science towards the sustainable development. It is also important to conserve the traditional knowledge and transform it into more scientific manner so that our next generation can use such knowledge for their better future.