For millennia, humans have lived within wilderness mosaics—agricultural fields interspersed with forests, grasslands, and streams—supporting a diversity of wildlife. Even today, many tribes and farming communities share landscapes with wild pigs, primates, and leopards that move freely through villages, orchards, and farms. Many of these animals have not seen undisturbed forests for generations; they have adapted to human-dominated environments. Urbanisation, agricultural expansion and commercial land use have created new types of landscapes. Simultaneously, the creation of wildlife sanctuaries has cordoned off certain areas as “natural,” reinforcing an ecological separation that did not historically exist.
The reality is more complex: humans and wildlife still inhabit an intertwined mosaic. Understanding this mosaic is essential for designing effective policy. There is now growing evidence that a key driver of escalating conflict is behavioural rather than purely ecological: many wildlife species have lost their instinctive fear of humans. For most of evolutionary history, humans were apex predators. Wild animals learned, over generations, to avoid human presence. This behavioural trait acted as a natural buffer—even in shared landscapes, animals kept their distance and direct confrontations remained rare. When the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, came into being, India’s wildlife was indeed threatened by over-hunting and poaching.
The wildlife policy framed in the 1970s was essentially a strategy for disaster management. Over time, this emergency response solidified into long-term policy. While it successfully enabled population recovery for several species, for two or three generations of animals, humans have ceased to represent a threat. Tourism compounds this behavioural shift. The Act, however, has not adapted to the behavioural and ecological complexities of the present. To correct this, we propose two major shifts. The first pressing need is to make compensation protocols simple, realistic and farmer friendly. It is inevitable to employ targeted hunting of selected species in some areas as an immediate short-term measure. Over time, a new long-term policy should take over.
The more challenging, and often contentious, reform involves reintroducing controlled, scientifically guided hunting in specific landscapes. The goal is not population reduction. Instead, research from behavioural ecology shows that predation pressure helps maintain avoidance behaviour in prey and even in carnivores. Several countries use carefully regulated hunting to ensure that wildlife continues to keep a respectful distance from human settlements. In India, a calibrated system, built with strict oversight, ecological criteria, and community participation, could help restore healthy behavioural boundaries between humans and wildlife. Over time, as human avoidance behaviour returns, coexistence becomes far more feasible.
The debate is not conservation versus livelihoods. India cannot afford such binaries. Economic realities and ecological imperatives must reinforce one another, particularly in a country where wilderness and human livelihood form an inseparable mosaic. Modern science—ecology, behavioural research, and socio-economic analysis—offers tools to rethink wildlife policy for the next fifty years. To move forward, policies must evolve beyond sentiment and symbolism. They must reflect how wildlife actually behaves, how people actually live, and how landscapes are actually being reshaped. A future where wildlife thrives alongside human communities is possible. But it demands that we confront uncomfortable questions, embrace scientific evidence, and redesign policy with both compassion and clarity. Only then can conservation succeed—sustainably, ethically, and for the long term.
(Milind Watve is an independent researcher; Gurudas Nulkar is Director, Centre for Sustainable Development, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune)
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