Legal gaps hindering wildlife conflict response, warns Supreme Court judge

India’s patchwork of overlapping and conflicting laws is hampering effective response to the growing challenge of human-wildlife conflicts, legal experts warned at the Regional Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Co-existence, organised by National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), which concluded in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.

Delivering the valedictory address, Justice Vikram Nath, Supreme Court judge and Supreme Court Legal Services Committee chairperson, highlighted the critical gaps in coordination between legal frameworks such as the Wildlife Protection Act, Forest Rights Act and Disaster Management Act.

“These laws contain overlapping mandates and gaps. For instance, the Wildlife Protection Act does not prescribe conflict mitigation measures, while certain forest laws can at times run counter to tribal rights,” he said.

He also raised concern over the lack of statutory recognition for wildlife corridors, which results in animals straying into villages and farmlands. “(The subject of) corridors currently have only passing mention in our laws and policies,” he said, while recommending practical solutions like constructing highway underpasses, mapping corridors through GPS data, and educating local communities about animal movements.

Justice Nath also drew attention to increasing incidents of conflict, while citing examples such as the plight of stray dogs and the delicate balance the judiciary has had to strike between human rights and animal welfare. He stressed that the realities of rapid development, habitat fragmentation and climate change have exacerbated such conflicts, and have transformed them into a daily challenge rather than rare occurrences.

Speaking on the occasion, Chief Justice of Kerala High Court Nitin Jamdar critiqued the myth of “pristine nature” often promoted in popular media, which depicts forests as devoid of indigenous people, thereby misrepresenting the historical and ecological reality of forest-dwelling communities.

Citing real-world ecological case studies, he explained how well-intentioned interventions can backfire due to the inherent complexities of ecosystems. For instance, the bamboo flowering in northeastern India leads to an abundance of seeds, which in turn triggers rat infestations. These rats gradually migrate to nearby agricultural fields, where they consume stored grains and destroy paddy crops, often resulting in food shortages and social unrest in forest-fringe communities.

Chain reaction

A similar chain reaction has occurred due to the veterinary drug ‘diclofenac’. Widely used to treat cattle, the drug proved lethal to vultures that fed on carcasses. This led to a marked decline in vulture populations. In the absence of these natural scavengers, animal carcasses remained exposed, drawing large numbers of stray dogs. These dogs then attracted leopards into human settlements on the forest fringes, thereby sparking increased human-wildlife conflict.

“These examples show how fragile and interconnected our environment is,” Justice Jamdar said, while adding that the human-wildlife conflict must be viewed from not just the perspective of humans, but also the unintended harm caused to animals.

Supreme Court Justice K.V. Viswanathan; Attorney General of India R. Venkataramani; Kerala High Court judges C.S. Dias, Anil K. Narendran, and A. Muhamed Mustaque; and NALSA member secretary Bharat Parashar also spoke on the occasion.