Satya Priya Sinha and Bitapi.C.Sinha
In the last five decades, the exponential increase in
human and livestock population and the resultant imbalance in land: people
ratio, besides changes in land use pattern, have placed a tremendous pressure
on natural resources like the forests and the wildlife. In order to meet
increased demands of the human population, vast areas of forests, marginal
lands, pastures and wastelands have been brought under cultivation, with the
result that even the protected areas have become fragmented and disturbed from
human activities, cattle grazing and exploitation of natural resources on a
large scale. The process of encroachment on forestland is still continuing (The
State of Forest Report, 1993). The situation in rural areas is very much
characterized by irrational and unsustainable land use pattern. Add to these,
industrialization and other developmental activities such as irrigation and
hydro-electricity projects, mining and other developmental activities, which
have caused drastic impact on protected areas.
Such human related disturbances in wilderness areas
have, over a period of time, ecologically dislocated some of the wildlife species.
While a few of these, in due course, are able to adapt to man-altered habitat
successfully, others stray out of protected areas and cause damage to human
life (at times fatal) and property. At the same time, man too enters wilderness
areas for his own needs, and there too a different dimension of the conflict
begins. Thus the interface of wildlife
habitats and human-use dominated landscape become ground for a wide range of
man-wildlife conflicts. Improvement in agricultural technology and integrated
rural community development programmes in such areas seek to contain the
conflict, but still they provide only a short-term solution.
India’s
National Forest Policy, 1988 states that the basic objective of the maintenance
of environmental stability would be achieved through preservation of natural
forest with a variety of flora and fauna and, wherever necessary, through
restoration of the ecological balance. To achieve this, a network of protected
areas (PA) has been established. IUCN recognizes different kinds of PA’s, but
in India,
under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (updated in 1991) only two categories
- National Park and Wildlife Sanctuaries - are recognized. The distinction
between these two has been limited to the authority to permit grazing and the
continuation of any other private rights in a Wildlife Sanctuary whereas no
such rights can be permitted to continue once an area has been declared a
National Park. The PA network in India consists of 85 national parks
and around 450 sanctuaries encompassing 18.8 % of the forest area and 4.6 % of
the total geographical area of the country (Rodger and Panwar, 1988; National
Data Base, WII, 1999).
