Browsing by Author "Langlang, Luxmi"

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Assessing the Patterns of Human-Wildlife Compensation Around Pakke Tiger Reserve Arunachal Pradesh
(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2019) Langlang, Luxmi; Das, Abjijit; Gopi, G.V.
Of all the types of interactions between humans and wildlife, human-wildlife conflict (hereafter HWC) poses a significant challenge to conservation efforts and species survival. This conflict may be manifested with a range of interactions with more negative actions being killing and injury to wildlife and humans while more neutral actions being internalizing costs of living with wildlife. People living in and around protected areas interact closely with wildlife. The negative interaction may be in the form of crop raiding, livestock depredation, property damage or death and injury to human. Thus, such interactions may result in economic loss to people and may create animosity against conservation through reduced public support and retaliatory killing. Further peoples’ perceptions towards HWC may vary by species, especially as large and potentially dangerous animals such as tigers and elephants are seen as a threat to farmers’ livelihoods. In this context, I assessed the patterns of HWC around Pakke Tiger Reserve to identify conflict species and hotspots of conflict. I tried to understand the constraints about compensation in terms of the gap between self-reported conflict and conflict reported to forest department. I also focussed on understanding the perception of people towards commonly found wildlife in the reserve with the help of attitude score. My study was carried out in 41 villages where I interviewed 327 households around Pakke Tiger Reserve. I used a semi-structured questionnaire and open-ended questions to understand the pattern of conflict, compensation issues, attitude towards different species and mitigation strategies most commonly used. Perception data was also collected. Crop damage (mostly by wild pigs, macaques and rodents) was reported as the most prevalent type of conflict around PTR followed by livestock depredation (mainly by wild dogs, tigers and leopards). Property damage and human death and injuries were reported to a lesser extent. Twelve different mitigation strategies were commonly used against crop raiding and livestock depredation. Night patrols and sound were used to keep animals away from fields. Livestock’s were mostly grazed in the forest, and hunting of predators was the most common mitigation strategy against livestock depredation.