SCIENCE REPORTER, JANUARY 201315

BIBA JASMINE

Feat

ure

Art

icle

INDIA’S wildlife is passing through an extremely critical period. Almost all the

protected areas and species are under human-related pressures in some way or the other. Common species such as House Sparrow, Black Drongo, and Indian Roller are becoming uncommon. The countryside that used to harbor Indian Fox, Jackal, and Blackbuck in large numbers is becoming harsh to them.

The destruction deplorably continues, at times, at an alarming rate. The depletion of the wildlife can be attributed largely to deforestation and inroads of human civilization into the forest areas. Despite a growing appreciation of wildlife, the explosive growth of the human population has led to soaring demand for food, timber and housing, which has led to the destruction of India’s natural habitats and of the beautiful wildlife heritage.

Laws exist to protect the wildlife from slaughter and to regulate poaching, but unfortunately, the legal measures do not fully serve the desired purpose.

The Indian landscape, once a broad mosaic of natural habitats ideal for wildlife, is now left with only scattered tracts of suitable ‘wildland’. This deteriorating condition calls for efficient wildlife management plans.

Wildlife Management—Huge ChallengeWildlife management and the challenge of conserving especially large mammals is complex and dynamic, involving ecological, economic, institutional, political, and cultural factors and any attempt to solve these issues must take them into account. Realistically, no single agency, organization, or institution will be able to solve wildlife conservation issues alone. No single plan or strategy can be completely comprehensive and correct. Recognizing these opportunities and the need to build strong partnerships with land managers, researchers, citizens, government officials, and adopting integrated wildlife management should be the way forward.

It is important to look at the following areas to bring about practical and tangible changes in wildlife related matters.

Identifying the gaps: A collective capacity is still sorely lacking due to an enormous list of gaps and needs. These need to be identified – from global to national to local and from international conservation organizations to local community groups to governments to research institutions.

Training and capacity building: Training and capacity building are needed for individuals and institutions at all levels dealing with all aspects of wildlife conservation, including the development and implementation of institutional procedures and principles,

site-specific programmes and processes, and governing laws and policies. Training programmes are especially essential at local levels to ensure the effective use of facilitation techniques and increased awareness of resources, best practices, tools, processes, and approaches for effective running.

Training should target forest managers, researchers and protected area officials who may have to deal with challenging wildlife questions. There is also heightened need to indulge conservation organization staff who may be managing conservation/wildlife programmes for protected areas or regions, but do not have a complete set of skills or expertise to address the complex, multidisciplinary nature of wildlife management.

Creating coexistence: Wildlife related organizations, community leaders, and other groups and institutions should share experiences and lessons learned to enhance and refine the approach and incorporate more “out of the box” thinking and application in the work.

In the Indian system of wi ld l i fe management, adaptive management and applied research play an important role where wi ldl i fe interactions need to be informed by a more systematic understanding, use, and application of biological, social, and cultural knowledge and norms. Adaptive management in terms of wildlife protection needs to be more responsive to disagreements; more proactive

Holistic Approach Required To

The conservation community is confronted with a huge challenge to address critical issues related to wildlife, which can only be possible through partnership and support at every level, and also encouragement to researchers.

SCIENCE REPORTER, JANUARY 2013 16

in using research, best practices, and other resources; and more assertive in learning about, developing, and implementing solutions.

Meraj Anwar, Senior Project Officer, WWF-India, feels, “Wildlife management should include social, cultural, historical, biological, ecological, political, historical, economic, and geographical components and should be made and reviewed, along with any action plans, by all stakeholders. Training, expert facilitation, and applied research focused on wildlife related issues, causes, effects, and solutions will improve overall management efforts. More effective monitoring and evaluation of all aspects of wildlife conservation need to occur and should be fed back into management and research plans.”

Strengthen resources: Institutional, individual, technical, and financial resources to support wildlife conservation practitioners and programmes need to be identified, developed, and strengthened. For example, resources are needed to support better facilitation of the wildlife management processes at local sites. Additionally, information that is currently dispersed, not easily accessed or applied in the field should be collected and analyzed to turn relevant work into easily digestible guidance materials and training programmes to ensure that these complex issues are dealt with as directly and confidently as possible.

With this in mind, criteria and processes need to be developed or improved on how managers and stakeholders select the tools and approaches that they will use to address conflict and evaluate their options in the selection of the many tools available (Francine Madden, 2004).

Create equitable, effective structures and processes: Considering the variety of structures and processes that guide stakeholders locally in developing wildlife conservation programmes, nationally in maintaining legal frameworks that dictate acceptability and feasibility of local options, and globally in accruing a wealth of information and resources with few opportunities for local synthesis and adaptation, it needs to be ensured that local, national, and global structures and processes are better designed to maximize effectiveness, help meet goals, and ensure equitability in the process.

According to Bharat Bhushan Sharma, Researcher at University of Delhi’s Department

of Environmental Biology, “There is dire need to be ensure that the structures and processes created are intentional and appropriate for all, not simply accidental or convenient for a few. They need to be designed to foster dialogue; facilitate informed, equitable decisions; enhance the benefits of and opportunities derived from wildlife for all stakeholders; ensure social and cultural appropriateness, as well as overall equity, transparency, and trust; and ensure that conservation laws, policies, and programmes are designed to empower and invigorate local authorities and stakeholders.”

Sufficient funding: Funding is very essential when it comes to biodiversity conservation or wildlife conservation per se. Nachiketh Sharma, Wildlife Researcher at Center for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, feels, “There is a clear relationship between the amount and reliability of conservation funding available, and the extent and quality of wildlife protection and restoration that can be carried out.”

Funding is needed at local, national, and global levels. Local funding is essential to ensure that “best practices” are being developed and implemented soundly and effectively, and that multidisciplinary, multi-tactic, and comprehensive programmes are given adequate support to ensure the best chance of success. At the global level, funding is needed to ensure that the progress and lessons learned locally are appropriately made available to the wider community. Globally informed and developed resources, exchanges, innovations, and efforts require

funding to ensure that local efforts continue to act with state-of-the-art knowledge and practice.

Create a Global Tool package: Taken together, these resources, sources of information, lessons learned, principles, and processes would comprise a dynamic, innovative, and readily available “ tool package” for practitioners and stakeholders. The success of this tool pack will lie in its ability to be dynamic, adaptable, accessible, and updateable to reflect changing needs, gaps, challenges, and site-specific conditions. The tool pack will also succeed if it offers guidance on process and assessment, information on lessons learned through case studies, and comparative evaluation of techniques and tools.

Committed research and researchers: With these research and applied management strategies in wildlife, it is vital to understand the role of core scientific research and researchers in wildlife. It is perhaps, one of the key areas that is often neglected.

Wildlife Research In crises, action must often be taken without complete knowledge, because to wait to collect the necessary data could mean inaction. Such immediate action requires working with available information with the best intuition and creativity one can muster, while tolerating a great deal of uncertainty. This, of course, runs counter to the way that scientists are trained, but is nonetheless necessary given the practical matters at hand.

Meraj Anwar, MPhil in Wildlife Science from Wildlife Institute of India. Senior Project Officer, World Wide Fund for Nature, India. Meraj’s team is monitoring wildlife corridors using camera traps, which is a challenging job, as most of the corridors are surrounded by human matrices.

Meraj Anwar, who has been working for the last two years with WWF-India in their tiger conservation program, feels wildlife research in India is getting advanced with acquisition of latest gadgets and techniques and a bunch of people with keen interest in wildlife conservation.

Feature Article

SCIENCE REPORTER, JANUARY 201317

Feature Article

I t is here that the ‘Researcher ’ is expected to provide quick, clear, and unambiguous answers. This is a major challenge for researchers, who must walk a fine line between strict scientific credibility and provide advice based on complete knowledge and facts.

Research in wildlife can be a very rewarding and inspiring career choice. People working with wildlife always appear to ‘love’ their job even though it may be physically demanding and strenuous. Being in contact with wildlife and having the opportunity to educate others on the

conservation importance of these animals is for some people a dream job.

Wildlife research is motivated by the need and desire to understand the lives of animals in their natural environment. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have been undertaken to develop appropriate conservation or management strategies in a world in which most species face challenges resulting from anthropogenic changes to the landscape. In these cases, the study species, other species that share their habitats, and often the individual study animals themselves, benefit from the research.

In addition, a growing number of studies of fundamental scientific issues in behavioral ecology and ecophysiology are conducted on wild animals under natural conditions, as scientists have come to understand the limitations of laboratory and captive work in those areas. Whether the primary motivation of field studies is the advancement of scientific knowledge or the acquisition of information used for management purposes, wildlife research yields results that are directly relevant to the welfare and conservation of

SSSSSCSSCSCSSCSCCSCCSCICCICISCCICISCISCISCISCIICISCISSSSCSCCCCCSCCCICSCISCISSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCISSCISSCCCCCCCCCSCISSSCSSCSSCSCCCCSCCCCCICISSSSSCSCSCSCCCCCCCCCCISSSSSCSSCSCCSCCCCCISCISSSSSSCSSCSCCCCCCCCCICSCISCICISSCSCSCSCCCCSCIIISSSSCSCCCCCCCSCIISSSSSCSCCCCCCCCCSCIISSCICCCCSSCCIICIISSSCCCCCCCIIICSCCICIIISCSCCCSSCCCCCICICICIICISCCCCIIIEEEEENENEENCENENENCENCNENENENCNCNNNCNENCNCNCNCENCENCENCNCENCENCENCNCENCNCNCEEEEEEEEENENCNENCNENCNNCNCNCNCNCENCEEEENENNNCNNCCENCNCEENENENNNNCNCCEENNEEEENNCNNCCCEEEENNCCCCEEEE CCEEEENNNNENCCEEEENENNNEEEEENEENCEENNNENCCCEEEEEENCEEEEEENNNCEEEEEEENCCEEEEEENNCCEEENNNEENNEE CEEEE E RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RRE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RRE REE RE RRE REE RRE RE E RRREEE RRE RE RE RRRRREE RREEE REEEE REPOEPOEPEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOEPOOEPOEPOEEPOOPOOEPOEPOPEPOEEPEEPEPOEPOEEEE OOOOOEEEEE RRRRRTRTRTRTRTERTERTERTERTERTERTEEEEEEERTRTETEERR EEERRTRTEERR EERRTEEERR EER ER EERTEER ERTTEERRTRTR RRR, RRRRRRRRRR,R,RRRRRRRRRRRR,RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,, RRRR,R, RR,R,RRR, R, RR,R,RRR,RRRRRR, R,R, RRRRRRRRR,RR,R,, ,, JAJAJAJJAJAJAJAAAAAAAAAAAANANANANANANNANNNNNNNNJAJAAAJAAAANNNNJAJAAAAANANNNNNNJAAAAAANNNNNAAAANNNJAAAANANNNNNNNJANNNJJAAAANANNANNNNJAJAAAAANNNJANJJJAJAJAANNNNJAANNJ NJJAAANNNAAAAAANNNNNJAAANANANNNJANJJ NUUUUAUAUAUUAUAUUUUUAUAUARUAUARUARUARUARUARARARARARUUARUUUUAUARUAUAARUUUUUUUAAUAARRUUAUAUARARARAARRRRUUUUAARUARRUUAARUUUUUUUUUUUAARUAAARUARRUARRUUARUUAAARARRUARRRRUUUUUUARRRRUUUUUARRRUARUUUU RRRRUU RUUUUU RRRRRRUU Y Y 2YY 2YY 2Y 2Y 2Y 2Y 2Y 2Y 22Y 2Y 2Y 2YY 2Y 2Y 2Y 2Y 2Y 22Y 2YYY 2Y 2Y 22YY 22YY 2Y 2YYY 2Y 22YY 222YY 2YY 2Y 2YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY 0100000101111111311133331313133131301000101000111111313130111131133330101111113010111313133111133311300113111331110113130101110131300001113301111

Many local people get their daily bread from ‘wildlife tourism’. If we educate them in issues such as making the park plastic free, the locals can play a big role in management of the park.

According to Neha Awasthi, wildlife is not only about exploring and roaming around the forest area... requires dedication for conserving the forest and their wildlife assets.

SCIENCE REPORTER, JANUARY 2013 18

the species, communities, and ecosystems studied.

“Indeed, species conservation would not be possible without a solid base of information derived from field studies and it could be argued that conservation decisions and actions made without the benefit of a scientific basis could be ineffective or even harmful,” says Abhishek Ghoshal, Research Affiliate at Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore.

There is practically a lot that a wildlife researcher or a biodiversity conservationist can do. The job of a wildlife researcher is to gather relevant information that allows authorities and policy makers to take better decisions. Pursuing employment as a wildlife policy analyst, they can facilitate wildlife professionals in putting forward changes to policies and regulatory guidelines to further conservation efforts, including the protection of endangered species.

Meraj Anwar, who has been working for the last two years with WWF-India in their tiger conservation program, feels wildlife research in India is getting advanced with

acquisition of latest gadgets and techniques and a bunch of people with keen interest in wildlife conservation. “Today we have some of the best scientists and researchers dedicated to save wildlife and environment. Extensive research work is ongoing but the sad reality is that, more and more scientific reports are getting stacked, without tangible implementation. There are immense gaps between understanding of scientists and managers and implementers.” According to Meraj, we need to apply outcomes of scientific reports on the ground for better management and conservation in the longer run.

Hari Krishnan S., researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, feels that the wildlife research scenario in India is still in infancy and has a long way to go. He is also of the opinion that, most of the sections in the Wildlife Protection Act are not based on sound science. A simple example from Andaman Islands is the issue of eradication of feral elephants and invasive chital (which have reached pest levels in some areas) from these islands. Both were introduced by people and now are causing severe degradation in many islands. But the WPA and much of the “conservation community” oppose the plan to eradicate these species because they are still “wildlife”.

“We are fighting an uphill battle to protect the highly endemic flora and fauna of Andaman Islands from the degradation caused by chital and elephants,” says Krishnan. According to him, conservation management action should be based on scientific studies, and if studies suggest a course of action that may sound unpleasant (such as culling of invasive chital), they still have to be followed for the greater good.

According to Abhishek Ghoshal, Research Affiliate at Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, there are still huge tracts of areas and species left unexplored in terms of systematic ecological studies in

the mountains, plains and seas of our country. “We need to look beyond our backyard, and push the limits of research and study areas available to us,” says the ardent wildlifer.

Most students/researchers have a tendency to go into an area, collect data and come back to analyze and publish their work. Abhishek believes for any kind of work in any area we need to pay due attention to what the local people have to say on the issues we are working on. His research experience has taught him that, knowing about the area is intuitively much easier and faster when you are talking to 10-12 local knowledgeable villagers who have been using the area through their lifetime. Even numerous transects within a span of even a month or more might not be enough to get a detailed account of what the area has to offer to a field biologist. Therefore, a combination of informal discussions with locals and field survey could provide a

Hari Krishnan S, researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India. His current work focuses on documenting large-scale patterns in occurrence, abundance and size distribution of reptile community in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Abhishek Ghoshal, M.Sc. Environment Management, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. Research Affiliate at Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore.

Feature Article

SCIENCE REPORTER, JANUARY 201319

more complete picture. We need to bear in mind that we learn from them first before teaching them.

One point that Abhishek mentions, and which needs to be addressed with utmost seriousness, is the need for collaboration/partnership among related departments. Gove rnment and non-gove rnment departments seldom work hand-in-hand in an area, and often compete with each other. Working together on converging issues would provide easier and more acceptable solutions for people and nature in any area.

Take for instance, a department issuing license for guns to villagers on the plea of crop protection from black bear and langur without sharing the issue with the concerned

department who could perhaps deal with the problem of the animals. The department does not conduct any further monitoring of what the people are doing (actually hunting Goral in winter) with those guns! Although it looks more like an administrative problem, it does come in the way of wildlife research as well, he says.

Nachiket Sharma, whose passion for wildlife increased when he came in touch with India’s renowned tiger specialist Dr. Ullas Karanth, feels lack of exposure and education is the major drawback for people not being involved in wildlife research or conservation directly. “Even though there are many institutes and NGOs functioning, and many enthusiasts involved in many research projects but wildlife in India needs more people participation,” says Nachiket. In order to do this, students who are interested in wildlife should get more encouragement and support. Currently, Nachiket is working with Prof. R. Sukumar, the ‘Elephant man of India’.

Nachiket feels that one issue that often gets neglected is the role of locals in conservation. Researchers or conservationists should acknowledge local people’s role in conserving biodiversity and their contribution in management of protected areas. This will give huge benefits to local communities and to the park managers as well. The payback of this association could be in many forms such as getting information on illegal activities in and around the protected areas. Also it is essential to educate them and make them understand the importance of natural resources like forests, wildlife, water etc.

Nachiket cites an example from his study area. The national highway bisects the park; many animals have to cross the road in order to get to water. There is a village very next to the park boundary and many local people get their daily bread from ‘wildlife tourism’. If we educate them in issues such as making the park plastic free, the locals can play a big role in management of the park.

A c c o r d i n g t o N e h a Aw a s t h i , a researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, wildlife is not only about exploring and roaming around the forest area but something that provides immense knowledge and requires dedication for conserving the forest and their wildlife assets. For Neha, it was a dream come true, when she got an opportunity to be part of Tiger Project at the Wildlife Institute of India in 2010. Her six months project at Corbett National Park matured her into a strong, daring and dedicated skilled researcher.

Neha believes that research will get success only when it reaches decision-making and is applied in management by forest officers. There is a need for proper communication between research and management to conserve all species in India. She emphasized that now is the time to implement “action research”. “In the current scenario, only 20% of research is converted into management decisions and the rest are just publications in the form of books and research papers kept in library shelf of various institutes”, adds a fervent Neha.

Given the huge weight of economic development unfolding across our planet, research coupled with tangible management approach will provide essential “expertise” to help trouble-shoot problems along the way. At this point in time, the conservation community is confronted with a challenge to work together to address every possible wildlife issue more effectively, which can only be possible through partnership and support at every level.

Ms Biba Jasmine is a Post-Graduate in Biodiversity and Conservation from the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. She is currently working at Delhi Pollution Control Committee, Department of Environment, Govt. of Delhi. Address: E-2/27, Street No-1, Shastri Nagar, Delhi-110052; Email: bibajasmine@gmail.com

Nachiketh Sharma, M.Sc. Applied Zoology from Mangalore University, Karnataka. Wildlife Researcher at Center for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Currently working on population dynamics of Asian elephants in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.

Neha Awasthi, Diploma in natural resource management from Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. Researcher at Wildlife Institute of India.