Human wildlife conflict: what the Act allows, who pays, and the crime bureau

Prelims and MainsCurrent affairs on this: Human wildlife conflict and wildlife crime

Conflict is where the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 meets a farmer with a ruined crop or a village with a dead child, and the Act answers with three instruments. Section 11 lets the Chief Wildlife Warden permit the hunting of an animal that has become dangerous to human life, a Schedule I animal only if it cannot be captured, tranquillised or moved. Section 62 lets the Central Government declare a species vermin in a named area for a set period, after which it may be killed freely; a Schedule I species can never be vermin. Compensation is not in the Act: States pay ex gratia under their own schemes, which is why amounts differ and why Kerala declared conflict a State specific disaster in 2024. On the crime side the Act created the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, which coordinates enforcement across States and with customs.

When an animal threatens people: the Act's three answers

Situation	Provision	Who decides	Limit
One animal dangerous to life, Schedule I	Section 11(1)(a)	Chief Wildlife Warden, written order	only if it cannot be captured, tranquillised or moved
One animal dangerous to life or crops, other schedules	Section 11(1)(b)	Chief Wildlife Warden or authorised officer	the permit names the animal and the area
A species damaging crops across a district	Section 62, vermin	Central Government notification	Schedule II species only, for a set area and period
Killing in self defence	Section 11(2)	nobody, it is not an offence	good faith, life in danger
Loss of life, crop or livestock	no provision in the Act	State ex gratia schemes	amounts and speed differ by State

The Act permits killing in three graded ways and says nothing about paying for the loss, which is why compensation is the State's word and not the Centre's.Source: Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Sections 11, 51, 62 and 38Y, as amended in 2002, 2006 and 2022

Section 11(1)(a): a Schedule I animal dangerous to human life, or disabled or diseased beyond recovery, may be hunted on a written order of the Chief Wildlife Warden, and only if it cannot be captured, tranquillised or translocated, a condition added in 2002. Section 11(1)(b): for other animals the Warden or an authorised officer may permit hunting when the animal is dangerous to life or property, standing crops included. Section 11(2): killing in good faith in self defence is not an offence.
Section 62: the Centre may declare a Schedule II animal vermin for a specified area and period. Nilgai and wild boar in Bihar and rhesus macaques in Himachal Pradesh have been declared; Kerala's requests for wild boar were refused, so it empowered local bodies to cull under Section 11 instead. The 2022 amendment reduced the schedules to four (I, II, plants, and CITES specimens), so vermin can only be a Schedule II species.
Compensation is a State matter: ex gratia for death, injury, crop and livestock loss under State schemes. The Environment Ministry's 2021 advisory asked States to pay within a fixed time, to add crop loss to crop insurance, and to let gram panchayats act; its 2023 guidelines cover elephant, leopard, gaur, snake, crocodile, macaque, wild boar, bear, blue bull and blackbuck conflict species by species. Elephants kill about 500 people a year, and electrocution is the largest unnatural cause of elephant death.
Linear infrastructure: a road, rail line, canal or power line through a corridor turns movement into collision. The 2016 guidelines on eco friendly measures for linear infrastructure, written by the Wildlife Institute of India for the National Board for Wildlife, ask for underpasses and overpasses, and any road through a protected area needs the Board's clearance.
The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, created by the 2006 amendment under Section 38Y and set up in 2007 under the Environment Ministry, collects intelligence, coordinates State forest and police action, helps customs at the frontier under CITES, and runs named operations, Save Kurma for turtles, Clean Art for mongoose hair, Softgold for shahtoosh, Lesknow for lesser known species. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence meets the same trade at the customs frontier. Hunting a Schedule I animal draws three to seven years' imprisonment under Section 51.

Mains: Conflict rises where protection has worked and habitat has not: more tigers, elephants and leopards on less connected land meet more people, so the answer is corridors, crop insurance and quick compensation rather than culling, which removes one animal and leaves the cause.

Further reading: The Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Bill, 2021 (PRS India)