Shrinking wildlife spaces are highlighting the fragility of the complex relationship between people and wildlife in rural and urban India. People-wildlife interactions lead to crop and property damage, livestock depredation, human injury and death — significant challenges to wildlife conservation, particularly in rural India. Over the past eight years, working in 17 sites across seven states with my research and conservation teams, I have sought answers to these questions: what is the nature and extent of wildlife-related loss? Can we identify and assist vulnerable people and places? How do we address losses? Can we improve mitigation and compensation? Ultimately, how do we prevent retaliation and promote tolerance for wildlife while ensuring people’s livelihoods and lives are not destroyed?
Click here to read the full article by Dr. Krithi Karanth in the Deccan Herald.
