HUMAN-WILDLIFE CONFLICT

Any interaction between human and wildlife that results in negative impacts on social, economic or cultural life, on the conservation of wildlife populations or on the environment is termed as human-wildlife conflict as per the World Wide Fund for Nature(WWF). Human was also animal for ages after the emergence of life on the earth, they used to live of intimacy with animals but humans evolved and animal leapfrogged.

The burgeoning of the human population and waning of animal population accompanying human advancement in technology had remodeled the way of living for humans. Human is continuously expanding their habitation and industrialization in forest lands which are reserve for wildlife that ultimately results in deforestation. The destruction of forests instigates animals to invade the human land for prey. There are many occurrences of human-wildlife conflicts and most of them are because of human intrusion on animal’s land for various motives like industrialization, farming, grazing of domestic animals, road and railway development through forest land, etc.

Recently, there has been a case in Kerala where a pregnant elephant died because of the human gaffe which ushered the global attention, besides humans have become selfish for their development and don’t care about the environment and ecosystem. After seeing ghastly pictures of animal cruelty it can tremble anyone. But almost all show their care and mourn for a day and again the next day it is unremembered. There are a plethora of such incidents that occur every year. It is the responsibility of the human to protect the areas of wildlife and not to disturb their habitat.

To combat such conflicts human settlement should be improved or there should be proper barriers between them, training should be provided so that humans can avoid direct conflict with animals, the establishment of technical supports, and geo-tagging of animals can benefit more. Life of human also matter as some time in this the conflict they die so, there should be a proper implementation of safety measure in such areas. The government should be more active on this matter as it is the ecosystem that helps us to live.