Human-wildlife coexistence has prevailed in Sri Lanka since ancient times. However, with an ever-increasing human population, the national forest cover, home for wildlife, has been reduced from 90 percent in 1840s to 29.7 percent in 2010. As a result, the country has experienced significant human-wildlife conflicts for land resources.
This includes loss of human and animal lives, increased crop and livestock depredation and damage to properties particularly in affected villages. This pathetic situation continues at an alarming rate and is creating difficulties for both people and wildlife.
These conflicts are common and frequent in villages near the periphery of national wildlife reserves in areas such as Yala, Udawalawa, Wilpattu, Hortan Plains, Wasgamuwa and forest reserves in places such as Singharaja, Hakgala, Ritigala and Minneriya-Giritale. Most people in these affected villages depend on subsistence farming for their survival and therefore, they need prompt external support to mitigate these conflicts.
On the other hand, wildlife plays a significant role in conserving upland faunal biodiversity, maintaining natural beauty of the reserves and strengthening the national tourism industry. Affected people should also be looked after in a sustainable manner. Most villages which are far away from the major reserves and where community forest, bush forest and woodlots are available, problems of such conflicts have been limited to crop damages and minor injuries to people.
In conflict management, some conventional approaches include establishing physical barriers to control wildlife penetration to human settlements, chasing wild animals back to reserves using repelling techniques and strengthening the legal enactments to control human behaviour on wildlife. This article, written in consultation with a Senior Land Use Planner in Canada and Senior Civil Engineer from Australia, is intended to increase awareness of the public of the need for a strategic approach for sharing land resources with humans and wildlife in conflict areas.
Management strategies should be designed with the goal of minimising injuries and deaths to people and wild animals, reducing depredation of crop and livestock resources, protecting properties in affected villages, and facilitating the well-being of wild animals and their basic needs in designated reserves. The article will also propose some potential strategies for sustainable management practices to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts.
Major animals in conflicts
The risks and severity of human-wildlife conflicts primarily depend on limitations of the reserves to provide food and water for wildlife and the capacity of adjacent farmlands in boarder villages to supply the basic needs of local people. Conflicts have been much more severe when boarder areas are occupied by food crops such as rice, maize, pumpkin, water melon, sugarcane, potato and coconut. In contrast, less severe conflicts occur where crops consist primarily of spices, tea and rubber. The most common wild animals that cause these crop losses include elephant, boar, monkey, deer, porcupine, palm civet, peacock and squirrel. In addition to crop losses, some of those animals, leopard and bear are mainly responsible for attacking domestic animals, causing deaths and injuries to human life, instilling 24-hours of fear and trauma among affected people, and damages to properties in villages.
There are some strategic approaches and potential management strategies for judicious sharing of the land resources which have proven effective in controlling human-wildlife conflict interactions and are summarised below.
Water storage in reserves
As most wild animals invade neighbouring villages for food and water, making such daily needs within the reserves would reduce many of these conflict situations. Some of the reserves such as Yala, Udawalawa, Wilpattu and Wasgamuwa are in flat-to-undulating terrain on stable reddish brown earth soils and annually receive about 650 to 1,600 million litres of rain water per one square kilometre. One remedy would be to construct larger ponds by depth and area to increase the storage capacity and provide wide channel spillways to pass excess water.
Excavated soil could be used to strengthen the earthen retention structures. These storage facilitaties would enhance fodder growth, another basic need of wild animals, around peripheral areas of water ponds. In contrast, reserves in rolling-to-hilly terrain, annually receive about 1,100 to 3,300 million litres of rainwater per one square kilometre. In this environment, smaller ponds in a scattered arrangement are suggested to increase water storage.
In wildlife reserves, with the onset of seasonal rains, controlling the growth of invasive plants to allow naturally occurring fodder plants to grow helps enhance seasonal food for wild animals and thereby discourages their encroachment into adjacent villages. Because of their aggressive nature, invasive plants rapidly replace indigenous species in the reserves. For example, lantana, a thorny shrub which is not consumed by animals has invaded and covered grasslands in the Udawalawa reserves; and Kalapu Andara, a woody tree species has spread in the coastal plain areas inclusive of reserves such as Bundala, Tabbowa, Wilpattu and Yala. Hence, control of invasive plants plays a key role in habitat enrichment and should be a routine seasonal practice. Consolidating fragmented habitats when establishing wildlife corridors would also promote the sharing of food and water resources among animals within the reserves, and thus reduce the risk of animal encroachment into neighbouring villages.
Compensation for victims
In some cases of animal predation, yield loss can be 100 percent for crops such as maize, water melon, pumpkin, banana, sweet potato, cassava, potato, and sugarcane. This can easily occur if farmers fail to or forget to guard their field even for one night or one day. Most farmers in the affected areas practise subsistence farming for their survival. They are poor in emergency domestic food stocks and money for a speedy recovery in the case of sudden and unexpected crop and livestock losses. Therefore, it is suggested to introduce crop and livestock compensation schemes for farmers to sustain them through these difficult situations. Similar compensation schemes are also needed for people for deaths and injuries and damages to household properties.
A novel corpus fund-based compensation scheme has been a path breaker in many neighbouring Asian countries. In such a scheme, it has decentralised the decision-making processes, enhanced the rates of compensation, and ensured that there are enough funds within the public institutions to distribute money quickly when needed. Hence, it could be a model to develop and introduce similar schemes in Sri Lanka to facilitate compensation for people affected by wildlife predation and destruction.
Modernisation of farming
Most people in border villages practise subsistence farming, growing crops such as rice, maize, finger millet, green gram, black gram, cowpea, sesame and home garden crops. Their returns often remain below the requirements for meeting the basic food and income of their families. Thus, they frequently go into the wildlife reserves to harvest forest resources to supplement their daily needs. This practice provides a high risk for human-wildlife conflicts. Introducing and promoting higher value crops such as chilli, onion, watermelon, potato, banana and papaya would enhance their income from cash crops.
This practice would reduce the need to enter and exploit the resources in the reserves. To implement the proposal, it will be necessary to provide skill development opportunities, supply mini-electrified fences for land parcels, establish centres for renting modern farm machinery, provide dug wells for irrigation crops, introduce high yielding crop varieties, provide fertiliser and agrochemicals timely and establish better access for marketing their products. It is also suggested to introduce crop and livestock insurance schemes for farmers to hedge against unexpected farming losses.
Networking information on elephants
Elephants are the dominant wild animals involved in human-wildlife conflicts with respect to the magnitude of damages inflicted. Establishment of an elephant information network to convey information in advance of their presence and movement in and off the reserves would warn the local inhabitants in boarder villages to take precautions and avoid injury or fatal encounters with elephants.
Based on experiences in neighbouring Asian countries, such networks would provide the latest information on the proximity of local elephants using technologies such as bulk SMS sent to the affected people and installation of mobile-operated elephant alert indicators such as red LED lights in strategic locations. Implementation of these practices has significantly reduced deaths and injuries to people in many other Asian countries.
Fabricated electric fencing
The use of standard electric fencing systems in place of conventional log and barbed wire fences could control most crop raiding wild animals without creating a risk for both people and animals. However, some barriers such as limited availability of these technology systems in local markets and the high cost of fencing materials need to be overcome. Another issue to consider is the maintenance and damage repairs, to the systems caused by elephants.
In addition, some farmers practise tapping electricity directly from the home supply and using it for electric fencing around farm plots. This is an illegal practice; it can cause high risk of electrocuting both people and wild animals and therefore, such illegal practices should be stopped. These issues require the attention of the local authorities.
Use of flashlight repellents, guard dogs, firecrackers, catapults; and installation of dummy tigers to imitate predators for monkeys as well as setting fire to bush heaps have been user friendly conventional methods for repelling animals such as monkeys in many Asian countries. Similar practices have been used in Sri Lanka with only limited success. The use of air rifles has been a more recent introduction. However, the high costs involved in the purchase of such rifles have restricted the use of air-rifles. Perhaps, one option would be to provide a facility for villagers to borrow or rent these guns at an affordable cost when required.
Translocation
Capturing wild animals using drop door cages has been a successful strategy for translocation of animals such as monkeys in neighbouring Asian countries. However, this approach needs a strategic plan to translocate the captured animals to places where natural habitats and facilities are suitable for these animals to avoid potential second order human-wildlife conflicts in the settled area. Authorities could also evaluate if the potential exists for resettling captured animals in other countries.
Restructuring daily activities
The article suggests restructuring the daily activities of people in affected villages since human-wildlife conflicts are much more frequent and severe from evening to morning.
Some options to consider include: rescheduling school operations in affected villages from about 9.00 am. to 3.00 pm; upgrading and strengthening telecommunication facilities to reduce travelling for village communication; encouraging villagers to hold social and religious activities during the day and minimising night events; establishing a ration shop in every village that could provide essential daily needs of villagers such as basic foodstuff, medicine, fuel and kerosene. This would reduce the need for long distance travelling particularly in the evening.
Other suggestions include storing domestic food grain stocks in more secured and appropriate facilities; providing mini-electric fences for residents in highly populated colonies and providing villagers with access to motorcycles on a concession basis to minimize accidental encounters on the road and episodic loss of lives.
Human-wildlife conflicts occur when wildlife requirements overlap with those of people in affected villages. It is more serious where wildlife population density is increasing, and habitats are fragmented and decreasing.
Such conflicts are becoming more prevalent as human populations increase, development expands, resources shrink, and climate change impacts are increasing significantly. On the other hand, if sustainable solutions for people and wildlife conflicts are not addressed, village people will develop negative attitudes on the value of forest and wildlife reserves. These attitudes are exacerbating these conflicts and undermining conservation efforts.
The writer is a freelance Agriculture Scientist (Natural Resource Management).