Assessing Human–Wildlife Interactions in a Forest Settlement in Sathyamangalam and Mudumalai Tiger Reserves

Abstract

India, a megabiodiversity nation, is home to 4,800 species and 1.3 billion people. The proximity of people and wildlife produces a wide variety of human-wildlife interactions particularly with forest-dwelling communities embedded deep within protected areas (PAs). We evaluated people-park relationships through the 421 families in Thengumarahada located between Sathyamangalam and Mudumalai Tiger Reserves in India. This settlement was originally granted land rights in 1948 but has been subleased many times over. We examined attitudes toward wildlife, PA, experiences of conflict, and challenges faced by people. Logistic regression models evaluated the factors associated with household losses and their attitudes. Thirty-four percent of households reported crop loss and 10% reported livestock predation. Crop loss was associated with growing rice and bananas and negatively with forest cover. Depredation was primarily associated with 87% of households grazing livestock in the forest. Usage of mitigation measures was not significantly associated with reducing conflict. Despite conflict losses and government pressure, only 34% of families expressed an interest in settling outside the reserved forest. People's motivations to remain in the forest hamlets included free resource availability (28%) and traditionfamiliar livelihoods (29%). People's mistrust of the forest department was heightened by the lack of awareness about (29%) and payment of compensation (3%). Given the frequency of conflict, the lack of infrastructure, inadequate compensation payments, and limited interest in relocation, balancing people-wildlife relationships in the forests of Sathyamangalam and Mudumalai Tiger Reserves remains a formidable task.

Factors Influencing People's Response Toward Tiger Translocation in Satkosia Tiger Reserve, Eastern India

“…For example, variables that belong to socio-economic category such as respondent age, gender, education, family size, and economic well-being have been known to influence forest resource use and ultimately the nature of interaction with forest and wildlife. Several studies have demonstrated a significant influence of these variables on the attitude toward conservation and reintroduction (Williams et al, 2002;Ericsson and Heberlein, 2003;Meadow et al, 2005;Ogra and Badola, 2008;Badola et al, 2012;Karanth and Ranganathan, 2018;Hiroyasu et al, 2019). Similarly, other studies have shown that the benefits from forest and wildlife can affect the attitude of people toward conservation in a positive manner (Williams et al, 2002;Lindsey et al, 2005;Lamichhane et al, 2018;Talukdar and Gupta, 2018;Sakurai et al, 2020).…”

“…Structured household questionnaire survey method (Gillingham and Lee, 2003;Bhattacherjee, 2012;Karanth and Ranganathan, 2018) was used to collect information from the households within the village. A pilot study was carried out in May 2019 in one of the villages, where 23 households were surveyed.…”

“…A total of 1,932 households were sampled. The order in which the households were approached was random (Vodouhê et al, 2010;Hariohay et al, 2018;Karanth and Ranganathan, 2018) and it ended up to 100% where people were willing to participate in the entire village. Only one respondent from each household was interviewed, accounting for the total sample size of 1932.…”

“…Other variables such as benefits from government schemes, fear for livestock, and fear for human life were more specific to the study site but are also supported by research findings globally. Losses due to human-wildlife conflict, if not compensated appropriately, leads to a negative outlook in people who are already asset poor and lack livelihood opportunities (Allendorf et al, 2006;Karanth and Ranganathan, 2018). To some extent, a transparent and timely compensation has been known to promote community support, tolerance to wildlife and decreased retaliatory killings (Naughton- Treves et al, 2003;Ogra and Badola, 2008;Agarwala et al, 2010;Dickman et al, 2013;Persson et al, 2015;Digun-Aweto et al, 2020;LeFlore et al, 2020).…”

On coming into animal presence with photovoice

“…With the exception of paying tourists, human populations are excluded from entering Bandipur. Damage and destruction of agricultural crops by wildlife, especially elephants and wild boar, is pervasive around Bandipur, and attacks on livestock by leopards and tigers is common in the region (Karanth and Ranganathan, 2018; Karanth et al., 2013). While policies are in place for local communities to file for compensation following incidents of crop and livestock loss, or human injury and death following encounters with wild animals, communities complain that the compensation system is deeply inadequate.…”