A study quantifies damages associated with human casualties resulting from conflict with wildlife in India. Human fatalities from wildlife are relatively rare but catastrophic. Using data from a survey of more than 5,000 farm households living within 10 kilometers of 11 wildlife reserves in India, Sumeet Gulati and colleagues estimated damages from human casualties and crop and livestock losses. The authors used a conservative estimate for the value of an economic measure known as statistical life. The authors found that even when a species is associated with rare occurrence of human fatalities, the expected cost of death from a negative interaction is several orders of magnitude higher than that of more frequently occurring crop and livestock damages. Farmers in conflict with elephants suffer 600-900 times higher damages than those in conflict with animals such as pigs and nilgai. Similarly, a negative interaction with a tiger implies average damages 100 times greater than that from a negative interaction with a wolf. According to the authors, the results suggest the need to focus on reducing negative interactions with species such as tigers, elephants, and leopards and support a concerted effort to reduce human fatalities as a way to reduce damage from certain species in India.
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Article #19-21338: "Human casualties are the dominant cost of human-wildlife conflict in India," by Sumeet Gulati, Krithi K. Karanth, Nguyet Anh Le, and Frederik Noack.
MEDIA CONTACT: Sumeet Gulati, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, CANADA; email: < sumeet.gulati@ubc.ca >
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences