Human-Animal Conflict:
Minister of Environment tabled data in Lok Sabha on human-animal conflict.
- Between 2018-19 and 2020-21, 222 elephants were killed by electrocution across the country, 45 by trains, 29 by poachers and 11 by poisoning.
- Among tigers, too, 29 were killed by poaching between 2019 and 2021, while 197 tiger deaths are under scrutiny.
- Among human casualties of conflict with animals, elephants killed 1,579 humans in three years — 585 in 2019-20, 461 in 2020-21, and 533 in 2021-22. Odisha accounted for the highest number of these deaths at 322.
- Tigers killed 125 humans in reserves between 2019 and 2021. Maharashtra accounted for nearly half these deaths, at 61.
- Human-wildlife conflict refers to the interaction between wild animals and people and the resultant negative impact on people or their resources or wild animals or their habitat.
- It occurs when growing human/animal populations overlap with established wildlife/human territory, creating a reduction of resources or life for some people and/or wild animals.
- Main causes of human-wildlife conflict include habitat loss, growth of the population of wild animals, changing cropping patterns that attract wild animals to farmlands, movement of wild animals from forests area to human-dominated landscapes for food and fodder, movement of human beings to forests for illegal collection of forest produce, habitat degradation due to the growth of invasive alien species, etc.
