Man Animal Interaction in special reference to Protected areas including Gir NP

 

                       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).