Title
The production of human-wildlife conflict: A political animal geography of encounter
Author(s)
Margulies, Jared D.;Karanth, Krithi K.
Published
2018
Publisher
Geoforum
Abstract
Highlights
•Critically analyzes narrative of human-wildlife conflict in Bandipur National Park, India.
•Declining tolerance for livestock loss is response to changing agrarian economy.
•Explicates linkages between global coffee prices, cattle populations, and negative human-wildlife interactions.
•New geographies of human-wildlife interaction can produce new sites of conflict.
•Political animal geography as a field of study is advanced by way of political ecology
Abstract: This study examines how transformations of a regional rural economy have produced new geographies of encounter between agricultural communities, their livestock, and carnivores surrounding Bandipur National Park in Karnataka, India. We analyze state discourses of human-wildlife conflict alongside the perspectives of rural agricultural communities about changes in human-wildlife interactions. Our study shows how state narratives about human-wildlife conflict mask more foundational changes in the livelihood strategies of agricultural villages in response both to park management and regional economic transformations, and how these changes are inherently woven into the production of new geographies of human-wildlife encounter. Our results suggest declining tolerance for injury and death of cattle by carnivores represents the cumulative impacts of a transformation of the livestock economy and more aggressive protected area management strategies. This research also suggests how political ecology can maintain its commitments to social justice while becoming more attuned to animals as political actors.
Keywords
Human-wildlife conflict;Human-wildlife interactions;Conservation conflicts;More-than-human geographies;Political animal geography;India
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