Wildlife must be managed like any other renewable natural resource for improving human well-being. Safety of local people and that of their crops, livestock and other properties must be the cornerstone of our conservation policy. If animals can generate benefits for the people through utilisation, any losses caused by them can be tolerated by people reasonably well. For this, we need to classify wildlife habitats into three classes: one, “protected areas” where wildlife is completely protected, which means no utilisation; two, buffer zones and other forests where wildlife is sustainably utilised (hunted) and the produce/income is shared with vulnerable communities; and three, human habitations, including croplands, where large mammals are completely unwelcome and are removed forthwith using whatever means work best, and fastest. This is how the rest of the world manages wildlife.
In short, we should practice “conservation” (consumption+preservation) rather than just “preservation”, as the amended Preamble of the Wildlife Act now provides. The insertion of the term “conservation” in the preamble has already determined the future direction of wildlife management in India. All we need to do is to wake up to this new mandate and align the rest of the Act, and related policies, with the preamble.
It is true that the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972 (WLPA) has authorised only one authority, the Chief Wild Life Warden (CWLW) of a state, to allow killing or capture (both are defined as hunting) of wild animals that are considered dangerous to human life or property. However, this power, as far as it relates to animals belonging to species included in schedule II of the Act, can be delegated to whoever the government wants. Bihar and Kerala have done it to some extent by allowing the panchayats to engage hunters to cull pigs and blue bulls resident in croplands, although they bury tonnes of meat in the ground rather than feeding it to the poor victims of their depredations.
We can innovate further, if there is a real desire to solve the problem. Obviously, we cannot allow a free for all in the name of community engagement, but it is possible to frame rules for allowing regulated hunting where communities take centre stage. Strangely, our law does not oblige the CWLW to control human-wildlife conflict; it only empowers them to do so—CWLW may or may not do it. We should amend the law to make it mandatory for the authorities to anticipate the dangers from wildlife and take preventive steps, before the killing and destruction actually start.
Translocating wild animals to protected areas (PAs) is no solution at all, except at a very small-scale and in special situations. Apart from being exorbitantly expensive and technically difficult, these animals usually go back “home”, causing destruction and disruptions on the way. Although there is a limit to how much we can enlarge our PAs, we should explore every reasonable possibility of doing so without sacrificing the well-being of local communities. I see little scope to enlarge our PA network further now as nearly 25 per cent of our natural forests are already under PAs and the rest is critical for the sustenance of communities. Moreover, the Forest Rights Act, 2006 does not allow us much leeway in this regard.
Our PA network may not be adequate but that is perhaps all that the country can afford. India is one of the most land-starved countries, with only about 10 per cent of global availability of forest land, per capita. Therefore, the only sensible and ecologically sound approach for us is to follow a graded land-use policy (as mentioned above), which is to reserve as much as land as we can afford for PAs, and practice sustainable use of wildlife resources outside PAs, for the benefit of the people vulnerable to their depredations. As animals and people have to live cramped together due to the paucity of land, keeping wildlife populations outside PAs at tolerable levels is critically important for people’s safety. If benefits from wildlife outweigh the dangers and losses, communities shall welcome wildlife around them. Conservation of wildlife at the cost of people is neither possible, nor desirable.
(H S Pabla is former chief wildlife warden, Madhya Pradesh).
This column was originally published as part of the cover story Conflict in the backyard in the May 16-31, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth