WWF-UNEP report: 35% of tiger ranges outside protected areas

Apart from India’s tigers, 40 per cent of the African lion range and 70 per cent of the African and Asian elephant ranges fall outside protected areas, finds the report.

Conflict between people and animals, from China’s wandering elephants raiding farms for food and water to wolves preying on cattle in Idaho, USA, is one of the main threats to the long-term survival of some of the world’s most emblematic species, the report said.

In India, data from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change shows that over 500 elephants were killed between 2014 and 2015 and 2018 and 2019, most related to human-elephant conflict. During the same period, 2,361 people were killed as a result of conflict with elephants.

“Within a human lifetime, we have already seen extraordinary and unparalleled changes to our planet. Global wildlife populations have fallen an average of 68 per cent since 1970,” said Margaret Kinnaird, Global Wildlife Practice Leader at WWF International.

India faces an increasing challenge of human wildlife conflict, which is driven by development pressures and an increasing population, high demand for land and natural resources, resulting in loss, fragmentation, and degradation of wildlife habitats. “These pressures intensify the interactions between people and wildlife because they often share living space without a clear demarcation of boundaries,” said the report.

The report also points to the increase of pandemics as a subset of this Human-Wildlife Conflict. “The COVID-19 pandemic – sparked by a zoonotic disease that very likely originated in wild animals and then spread to people… Zoonoses, diseases transmitted from wildlife to humans and vice versa… is driven by the close association of people, their livestock, and wildlife and by the unregulated consumption of wild animals. With closer and more frequent and diverse contact between animals and people, the probability of animal microbes being transferred to people increases. As wildlife-borne infections increase, the probability of outbreaks – and pandemics – grows as infectious disease spreads…,’’ says the report.