Indigenous insights on human-wildlife coexistence in southern India

Insights on human-wildlife coexistence from social science and Indigenous and traditional knowledge

Much work on human-wildlife conflict focuses on safeguarding wildlife from humans and vice versa, protecting humans, their crops, livestock, and property from wildlife, and mitigating negative, sometimes lethal encounters. The emphasis is on conflict, a framing that reinforces human-nature dualisms and instills the notion of humans and wild animals as adversaries. Although human-wildlife interactions are sometimes negative, they can also be neutral, coadaptive, and mutually beneficial. They can demonstrate coexistence. Conservationists have tended to overlook or simplify such relations. They have either failed to define coexistence or characterized it as the outcome of externally driven conservation strategies. Conflict has been perceived as the norm, with coexistence a distant ideal. This way of seeing ignores the many ways people have coexisted with wildlife and coadapted with wild animals in multispecies landscapes for generations. We encourage greater attention to Indigenous and traditional experiences and knowledge, and seeing how coexistence can be a norm, which sometimes includes negative interactions and conflict. Scholars in geography, anthropology, animal studies, philosophy, Indigenous studies, and multispecies ethnography offer insights into how paying attention to coexistence can reshape understanding of human-wildlife interactions that decenters humans, and actively supports ethical conservation. Contributions from social scientists include focusing on relational ways of thinking and seeing that the lives of humans and other beings are intertwined and not governed solely by conflict.

Epistemological dimensions of Indigenous honey collection in the Kattunaicken community of South India

Indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) has proven effective in environmental governance, forest management, and sustainable development, yet it is threatened by globalization and rapid social-ecological changes. In southern India, I investigated the engagement of the Kattunaicken community with the forest, particularly through honey collection, to explore the connection between their Indigenous epistemological identity and their role in caring for the forest and its inhabitants. I conducted 48 interviews and accompanied 11 forest walks as part of walking ethnography with male community members, who are primarily involved in honey collection within the Wayanad district of Kerala. The Kattunaicken identity was intrinsically linked to their knowledge of the forest, with reciprocal epistemological interactions between the community and forest entities (trees, animals, and bees). Honey collection emerged as an epistemological endeavor, manifesting their Indigenous identity through the collective "knowing" of the forest that encompassed sensorial, ethical, and metaphysical dimensions that facilitated harmonious coexistence and care for the forest and its inhabitants. The Kattunaicken world of knowing challenges extractivist interpretations of nontimber forest product collection, emphasizing the importance of Indigenous epistemologies in shaping alternative knowledge construction for forest conservation. Their epistemological framework highlights care as an active process emerging from collective understanding and negotiation among all entities within their shared epistemic realm, fostering a harmonious coexistence that transcends conservation efforts.

The Understanding and Exploration of Community Perception and Response Associated With Monkey Bites in a Rural District of Odisha, India: A Qualitative Study

Background Human-wildlife conflict is a global threat to sustainable development, food security, and conservation. Southeast Asia, including India, faces a major risk, with a very high number of animal bites occurring annually. While several studies have focused on dog bites, the aim of this study is to describe monkey bite cases and understand the associated factors to improve rabies prevention. This study explores patient perceptions and attitudes regarding the availability of services, alongside considerations of human and animal ethics with respect to monkey bites. Methods An exploratory qualitative study was conducted with bite victims using purposive sampling. In-depth interviews (IDIs) were employed to gather detailed information about the bites and associated factors until data saturation was achieved from four participants. Results Victims provided detailed accounts of the incident, their perceptions and attitudes regarding animal bites, and their ethical concerns. Content analysis of the transcripts revealed five themes: (i) bite as an event (nature of the bite, knowledge of the victims), (ii) post-event care (management at home, management at the hospital), (iii) health system (health system preference, health system preparedness), (iv) animal-human conflict (animal control measures, preventive measures), and (v) environmental and ethical issues. Conclusion There was a lack of knowledge regarding wound management and health service utilization among bite victims. The study highlights the need for awareness generation and educational sessions focused on environmental and animal ethics to improve health outcomes among the general public.

Adivasi (Tea Tribe) worldviews of living close to wild Asian elephants in Assam, India

In Assam state, northeastern India, human-elephant conflict mitigation has included technocentric measures, such as installation of barriers, alternative livelihoods, and afforestation. Such measures treat conflict as a technical problem with linear cause-effect relations and are usually ineffective over the long term because they do not consider how historical conditions have shaped present interactions between humans and elephants. Human-elephant encounters in South Asia, including in Assam, have arisen from colonial and postcolonial land-use policies, ethnic relations, and capital extraction. To disentangle these relations, we conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Udalguri district of Assam among the Adivasi (Tea Tribe) to examine their interactions with wild elephants. Through socioecological ruptures, caused by displacement and deforestation, Adivasi (Tea Tribe) and elephant lives have intersected through space and time. Adivasi (Tea Tribe) life narratives and observations of daily encounters with elephants revealed that their interactions are multifaceted and motivated by multiple factors. Myths and oral testimonies revealed that the community has created conceptualizations of the elephant by closely observing their behavior, especially their movements, diets, vocalizations, and interactions with humans. These conceptualizations are filled with vignettes of shared marginalized lives, caused by the loss of homeland, food poverty, and uncertain ways of living. The empathy, expressed by the Adivasi (Tea Tribe), highlights ways of living with elephants that are affective and reach beyond technocentric interventions. For Adivasi (Tea Tribe) members, cohabitation could thus be achieved by living close to elephants as uneasy neighbors. Concepts of cohabitation, we suggest, could be harnessed to inform conservation policy and bring into focus the critically important-and yet often underutilized-values, encompassed by bottom-up, place-centric understandings of what elephants are and how coexistence may be possible in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes.

Creating constellations of coexistence through connections between people in human-wildlife conflict areas

Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) is a critical challenge to human development and well-being and threatens biodiversity conservation. Ideally, HWC mitigation should benefit both wildlife and communities and limit the costs associated with living alongside wildlife. However, place- and context-dependent realizations of conflict are often overlooked in HWC mitigation. Social and systemic dimensions of human-wildlife relationships often receive limited consideration in HWC as a concept and in mitigation strategies implemented globally. In recognizing our collective symmetries as a diverse group of researchers, we pose the idea of constellations of coexistence, based on Atallah et al.'s "constellation of co-resistance." Building on literature and our interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral experiences of working with diverse species inhabiting different sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic landscapes, we considered evidence of cultural nuances (e.g., sociocultural dimensions of human-elephant and human-lion interactions in East Africa and India) in HWC mitigation and argue that failing to incorporate them in mainstream practices poses a myriad of ethical and practical consequences. Locally situated but globally relevant, participation of local and Indigenous communities in HWC mitigation activities produces better conservation outcomes. Centering communities in the ideation, implementation, and evaluation of HWC mitigation promotes more equitable and sustainable management strategies for long-term human-wildlife coexistence.

Effects of climate, land use, and human population change on human-elephant conflict risk in Africa and Asia

Human-wildlife conflict is an important factor in the modern biodiversity crisis and has negative effects on both humans and wildlife (such as property destruction, injury, or death) that can impede conservation efforts for threatened species. Effectively addressing conflict requires an understanding of where it is likely to occur, particularly as climate change shifts wildlife ranges and human activities globally. Here, we examine how projected shifts in cropland density, human population density, and climatic suitability-three key drivers of human-elephant conflict-will shift conflict pressures for endangered Asian and African elephants to inform conflict management in a changing climate. We find that conflict risk (cropland density and/or human population density moving into the 90th percentile based on current-day values) increases in 2050, with a larger increase under the high-emissions "regional rivalry" SSP3 - RCP 7.0 scenario than the low-emissions "sustainability" SSP1 - RCP 2.6 scenario. We also find a net decrease in climatic suitability for both species along their extended range boundaries, with decreasing suitability most often overlapping increasing conflict risk when both suitability and conflict risk are changing. Our findings suggest that as climate changes, the risk of conflict with Asian and African elephants may shift and increase and managers should proactively mitigate that conflict to preserve these charismatic animals.