Human-animal conflict: Policy must ensure farmers don’t bear the burden of wildlife conservation
While we focus on monsoon variability and price volatility, crop losses from wildlife raids are a growing problem for farmers. Compensation schemes exist, yet they cover only visible losses and are mired in red tape. Can India design policies that protect both farmers and wildlife?
The vagaries of monsoon rains and volatility of market prices are not the only factors that eat into farmer incomes. Raids on crops by wild herbivores, a less visible but growing crisis, are also contributing to it. Fleeting blackbucks and dancing peacocks might charm city folk, but they are a nightmare for farmers.
Attacks on humans by carnivores, particularly tigers, are newsworthy, but financial losses inflicted by wild herbivore raids often go under-reported.
At the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, we surveyed over 1,200 affected farmers across Maharashtra and conducted in-depth interviews of farmers in the Konkan region.
We accessed multiple data sources and studied the damage inflicted by macaques, langurs, blackbucks, chinkaras, Indian gaur, deer, nilgai, sambar, wild boars, giant squirrels, porcupines, elephants, peacocks and parakeets. With this data, we computed estimates of net farmer income losses in Maharashtra.
While earlier studies used visual inspections to estimate crop damage, the losses don’t stop there. Expenses on guarding and fencing and seasonal delays also need to be accounted for. Indirect effects, like specific crops abandoned or restricted, or the use of suboptimal practices in the face of an impending risk, also add to farmer losses.
Wildlife raids have significantly curtailed traditional household kitchen gardening in the Konkan belt. This forces families to incur additional expenses on buying vegetables. Society suffers losses too. Farm employment is a source of income for landless and marginal farmers. When a crop is destroyed mid-season, the income of labourers and other stakeholders gets wiped out.
We accounted for invisible damages and farm protection costs to estimate the net agricultural loss caused by wildlife. Our estimate is that Maharashtra’s farmers lose between ₹10,000 crore and ₹40,000 crore per year. Crop damages are compensated by the state’s forest department. However, in the years from 2020 to 2024, it disbursed a total of just ₹210 crore.
This difference can be attributed to lack of standard damage assessment procedures, farmer ignorance, complex bureaucratic procedures and the fact that compensation covers only visible damages and not indirect losses. Thus, what farmers receive is a tiny fraction of the actual loss and does not reveal the enormity of the problem.
We studied the Maharashtra government’s resolution on compensation and its protocols. It mandates a panchanama (or official declaration of facts) in the presence of one official each from the departments of forest, revenue and agriculture. This is neither easy nor time efficient, as the procedure sets a 14-day timeline for completion.
On one hand, there is poor awareness among farmers, especially those who are illiterate, and on the other, we have some cultivators who prefer to stay away from such bureaucratic procedures. State government data between 2020 and 2024 shows that only 48% of the claims were accepted and 37% were paid.
The affected farmers, our study found, were highly dissatisfied with the compensation protocol of the state’s forest department. Many said that such damages are often undervalued; in some cases, even the amount recorded on the panchanama was not fully reimbursed.
Among our 1,200 respondents, 24% identified wildlife crop raids as the primary reason for their income losses, while 54% reported a discontinuation of at least one crop.
Our Konkan estimates suggest that this coastal region’s farmers have borne annual losses of between ₹117,000 and ₹133,000 per hectare on account of wildlife raids. If we include the damage to kitchen gardens, the combined annual losses in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts is estimated at ₹5,677 crore per annum.
Studies from around the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve suggest that crop yields at a distance of 5km from the forest boundary can be double what farmers closer to it obtain. Even with actively guarded farms, wild animals are a major menace.
Support-cum-reward experiments by Milind Watve have shown that appropriate incentives can increase agricultural output near protected areas by 2.5 to 4 times. Our survey also shows that crop raids are not just a problem around protected forests. Farmers across the state have been affected.
For the sake of remunerative farming in India, compensation protocols need to be fair and simple, with timely payments. Using behavioural economic approaches like support-cum-reward schemes can significantly reduce the forest department’s work.
Moreover, we need deeper research on the root causes of herbivore raids to formulate long-term mitigation measures. India is a highly diverse country. A clear policy for human-wildlife coexistence and a practical management system are critical for both wildlife conservation and crop security.
This is not about placing economics above ecology, but a call for policies that do not impose the costs of conservation on farmers. Our research shows that farmers are willing to participate in resolving human-wildlife conflicts.
If long-term solutions are found, the forest departments of states would be relieved of the burden of handling these problems, which would leave them with more time for conservation work. We must spare no effort in working out how best to secure Indian farms from raids.
The authors are, respectively, director, Centre for Sustainable Development, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune; and retired professor, IISER Pune.
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