Human-Wildlife Conflict: The Case of the Royal Bengal Tiger
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Date
2021-11-10
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Abstract
Sunderban is the largest estuarine delta with one of the highest human-wildlife conflicts in the world, ascribed to the aggressive Bengal tigers’ tempestuous interactions with the resident communities. Anthropogenic interactions with their vagrant decisions and activities in and around the mangrove forests play a critical role to exacerbate the ghastly human-tiger fatalities. Encroachments next to the forests, prey depletion, and tiger killings, overwhelmingly threaten the extirpation of the Bengal tiger. Human incursions into the forests for foraging and tiger straying outside the forests for livestock predation, both result in tiger conflicts while reducing tiger tolerance levels. The eradication of the tiger (a keystone species) threatens the destruction of the unique Sunderban ecoregion. Despite multiple studies, very little is known about the psycho-social, socio-political, historical, cultural, and physical complexities that the peripheral area residents foster with various stakeholders and tigers. Their interactions often undermine the ecosystem integrity, the increasing vulnerabilities of humans and wildlife, and the aversion of the system to the destructive human presence has hardly been understood. This study has attempted to explore and understand the stakeholders’ views that have influenced the relationships over time. Qualitative research was used to capture and interpret the participants’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that dominate the various constructs and complexities of the unique relationships. Social constructivism paradigm was used to construe the subject knowledge through discussions and interactions with the societal members. The emphasis was not on formulating conflict mitigation strategies but on understanding the conflicting dominant undercurrents, competing interests, and operational paradoxes. While it is irrefutable that humans and tigers must be disjoined to ensure peaceful coexistence, it is argued that measures must be formulated to address the sustainability and distributional equity to protect this unique ecosystem.
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human-wildlife conflict, Sunderban, human-tiger conflicts, tiger widows, peripheral areas, protected areas