COEXISTENCE IN A BIOSPHERE

RESERVE-MYTH OR REALITY

KAUSTAV GHOSAL
FIELD WORK ||  KEYSTONE FOUNDATION
 Coexistence in a Biosphere Reserve-Reality or Myth

Human-wildlife conflict is not a new issue but with the increasing

commercialization of different areas leading to habitat fragmentation in a
biosphere reserve, it has come into forefront. I think in our land of
contradiction, the same animal means different things to different people. For
example – an elephant is an object of worship, a target for hunters, a burden
to the people, a companion of Mahouts and finally a keystone species. This is
the exact reason why I feel that coexistence in a Biosphere Reserve is both a
reality and a myth.
I would like to start with discussing briefly about the broad causes of human-
wildlife conflict. The reduction in the size and quality of available habitat due
to encroachments, deforestation, denotification of Protected Areas (PAs),
poverty and other constraints that force disadvantaged humans to exploit the
natural resources lead to most of the conflicts.
There has been a long-standing debate on whether the forest dwelling tribal
people be given permanent rights within national parks, wildlife sanctuaries
and tiger reserves. I feel that living in harmony with natural habitats would
have been the case for many human communities in the past, when people
lived in vast swaths of wilderness at low densities and used nature's resources
solely for their own needs. But now, forest dwellers are mainly concentrated in
the shrinking forest areas putting more pressure on the existing natural
resources.  With cash and commerce having entered their lives, they no longer
collect forest products just for their own subsistence but to supply bottomless
markets. However, this is not the case throughout India. For example- we have
seen how the livelihoods of the Irula and the Kurumba tribes depended on the
collection of natural honey which was processed and sold to the market.
Moreover, animals like gaur and elephants have co-existed with these
communities for so many decades peacefully in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.
However, Tolerance is not forever.
We have seen that the number of Bonnet macaque (endemic to Southern
India) have decreased over the years which has led to it getting transferred
from the “least concern” to the “vulnerable “category in the latest IUCN
report. There have been both positive and negative interactions between
these species and the urban community. Examples of positive interactions
include that these species get different foods from the tourists and in turn the
tourists get the joy of interacting with these beautiful creatures. But
unfortunately, the number of negative interactions is on the rise like
consumption of plastics by the macaque, destruction of agricultural fields and
spread of diseases like Monkey fever to name a few. Some management
solutions which are being tried are declaring some specific zones as protected
exclusively for these species and keeping a wooden branch which can help
these monkeys to better move from one high end tree to the other one and
prevent them from getting on to the low height trees and to the roads thus
decreasing the chances of accidents. So, at times, coming across these
examples really make me feel that co-existence in a biosphere reserve has now
become a myth.
However,I would like to discuss some steps that have been taken so that co-
existence in biosphere reserves truly become a reality. In case of wild animals
like tigers, elephants and gaurs, corridors are important not only to keep them
away from the agricultural fields to reduce human-wildlife negative
interactions but also to maintain genetic flow preventing in-breeding
depression in the species. But there are threats to corridors prevailing as well
like these corridors lack legal protection and they are encroached upon by
human settlements. To overcome these problems, some models have come
into existence to secure the corridors developed. These are Private Purchase
Model, Community Securement Model, Government Acquisition Model and
Public Securement Model. There have been recent examples of Wayanad
Corridor, Kerala based on Private Purchase Model, Chilla - Motichur corridor,
Uttarakhand based on Government Acquisition Model and Garo Green Spine
based on Community Securement model which have been pretty successful in
mitigating human-wildlife conflicts.
Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that monitoring the different policies,
awareness building among the indigenous communities and policy mobilization
will always be the key to ensuring peaceful coexistence in a biosphere reserve.