The cost of coexistence: India’s farmers are losing the war with wildlife
Across India, a slow-burning crisis is reshaping rural life. Wild animals — elephants, tigers, leopards, wild boars, nilgai, and monkeys — are raiding crops, destroying livelihoods, and in some cases killing people. The scale of loss has long been known to those who live on forest edges. What is newer is that it is finally being measured, and the numbers are staggering.
According to a Down to Earth report by Sunita Narain, a 2025 study by Pune’s Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics — the only study of its kind — estimated net agricultural losses in Maharashtra due to wildlife at Rs 10,000–40,000 crore annually. That is almost certainly an undercount. The same study found that 62 per cent of farmers in affected areas had reduced their cultivated area because of animal attacks, and that one in three cited wildlife damage as the primary cause of income loss. A separate 2025 study from Kodagu in Karnataka found that nearly half of surveyed farmers were losing up to Rs 90,000 per year — losses severe enough to push many into debt. The forest department of Himachal Pradesh estimates state-wide annual crop losses at Rs 500 crore, rising to Rs 1,500 crore once the indirect costs of protective fencing are included. A 2026 study from the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu found that 90 per cent of farmers named wildlife conflict as their primary production risk.
This is not simply a conservation failure — it is, in part, a consequence of conservation succeeding. Tiger and leopard numbers have grown. Elephant populations have stabilised. Wild boar, never a protected species in the same sense, have expanded rapidly. The animals are thriving. But as their numbers have grown and their habitats have been squeezed by encroachment from the other direction, they are pushing outward — into fields, orchards, villages.
The political response has been slow and, according to Down to Earth, often confused. The most acute flashpoint is Kerala. Over the last 15 years, wildlife encounters in the state have caused 1,527 human deaths — 276 from elephant attacks alone. Wayanad district recorded 450 human-wildlife conflict incidents last year. Faced with this, the Kerala government introduced its own Wildlife Protection Bill, declaring wild boar attacks a state-wide disaster and classifying the animal as vermin — a status that would allow licensed shooters, called upon by panchayats, to cull them. In February 2026, the state governor agreed to forward the bill to the President for clearance.
At the same time, in late 2025, the National Board of Wildlife moved in what many see as the opposite direction: recommending that the rhesus macaque be reinstated as a Schedule II protected animal, making culling significantly harder. Forest departments across several states, Narain notes, already agree that monkey populations have become a serious problem and that sterilisation programmes have not worked. The simultaneous loosening of one constraint and tightening of another reflects exactly the kind of policy incoherence that has left farmers without meaningful recourse.
The one positive development: as of the kharif season of 2026, the Centre has included animal-related crop losses within the national Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana insurance scheme, giving farmers a 72-hour window to report losses, to be verified by drone. Whether this proves workable in practice remains to be seen — the same Gokhale Institute report found that of the 25 per cent of affected farmers who sought compensation under existing schemes, only 1–2 per cent received payments that reflected their actual losses.
This is a developing story. IWN will continue to follow it.
Source: Down to Earth
Tigers are changing — and the 2026 State of India’s Environment report is sounding the alarm
India’s tiger conservation story has long been told as one of triumph. And by the numbers, it still is: from 1,411 tigers in 2006, the population has grown to 3,682 as of the 2022 census, with the 2026 census expected to show a further increase of 10–15 per cent. But according to a report in The Quint on the 2026 State of India’s Environment report — published by the Centre for Science and Environment and Down to Earth magazine — success is generating its own dangers.
The report documents at least 43 human fatalities from tiger attacks in the first half of 2025 alone. In four of those attacks, tigers consumed parts of their prey — a behaviour associated with injury, old age, or chronic prey scarcity, and one that wildlife managers consider a significant warning sign. As tiger populations inside reserves have reached saturation, individuals — especially younger, dispersing males — are increasingly moving into lantana-choked buffer zones outside protected areas. These offer cover but lack sufficient prey, leaving tigers hungrier and bringing them closer to human settlements. Approximately 40 per cent of India’s tiger territory, one cited study found, is shared by 60 million people.
The Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh has become a particular focal point. According to the same report, eight tigers have died in and around Bandhavgarh since November 2025. A status update submitted by the state government found no evidence of poaching. Four deaths were caused by electrocution from illegal live wires strung by farmers to protect crops — the very farms being raided by the same wildlife driving conflict. The remaining four died from disease and territorial fights. Authorities have initiated legal proceedings against those responsible for the illegal wiring, but the incident underlines the circular trap that both tigers and farming communities are now caught in.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has publicly acknowledged the growing pressure, citing rising populations of elephants, leopards, and tigers as contributing factors, and announcing the construction of barricades along forest borders. Whether infrastructure-level responses are sufficient — or even appropriate — to what the CSE describes as a deeper behavioural and ecological shift is a question the report leaves pointedly open.
Source: The Quint · Down to Earth
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