For over 2600 years, Gautam Buddha’s moral principles have emphasized non-violence and respect for all living beings, recognizing all flora and fauna as sentient and capable of suffering. This ethos of compassion still influences Nepal’s cultural and spiritual approach to wildlife. However, modernization, habitat encroachment, climate change and anthropogenic pressures have escalated human-wildlife conflicts (HWC). As landscapes shrink, peaceful coexistence demands blending traditional ecological wisdom with science-based strategies. Achieving this harmonious balance honors Buddhism philosophy while ensuring ecological sustainability.
History: Harmony to conflict
For millennia, human societies coexisted with wildlife in a delicate balance. According to Fabrice Teletchea’s book ‘Animal Domestication (2018)’, early modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged approximately 200,000 years ago, depended on hunting wild animals and gathering plants for survival. This dynamic began to shift around 12,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture in regions (Fertile Crescent, China and Mesoamerica). The domestication of plants and animals, coupled with agricultural expansion, progressively confined wildlife to fragmented habitats. As agrarian societies displaced hunter-gatherer communities, human-wildlife interactions (HWI) evolved from coexistence to competition.
This transition further accelerated with industrialization and urbanization. A peer-reviewed study, published in Biological Reviews, estimates that since 1500, up to 13 percent of known species—approximately 150,000 to 260,000—may have already gone extinct. This alarming loss termed “biological annihilation” is directly linked to human activities. Historical records by the Smithsonian Institute highlight species like dodo (1690), Labrador duck (1870), Tasmanian tiger (1936), Hawaii chaff flower (1962) and Golden toad (1989), all driven to extinction by anthropogenic pressures.
HWCs in Nepal
Nepal’s HWC trajectory closely mirrors global patterns. The establishment of 12 national parks and several conservation areas including Chitwan and Bardiya National Parks initially provided wildlife with critical refuge. However, these protected areas also created conflict hotspots along their buffer zones, where human settlements and agricultural lands directly border wildlife habitats.
A 2016 PLOS One Journal study documented 463 conflict incidents resulting in human injury or death caused by large mammals between 2010 and 2014. Between 2000 and 2020, Nepal recorded 1139 cases of wildlife mortality and 887 human fatalities linked to HWCs. Notably, thousands of people and their properties in the Tarai regions were affected by elephant-related conflicts alone, underscoring the gravity of the issue.
HWC refers to harmful encounters where wildlife threatens human safety, livelihoods or cultural values, often triggering retaliatory actions. HWI is a neutral term covering positive, negative or benign forms of contact. Coexistence, however, is a balanced state where humans and wildlife share space with tolerable impacts, supported by adaptive management, cultural acceptance and mutual benefits.
Nepal offers an ideal case for better understanding these dynamics. Rapid, unplanned urbanization and intensified agriculture have escalated competition for habitat and resources. Protected areas, surrounded by settlements, have led to wildlife frequently venturing into croplands and communities, heightening conflict potential.
HWC, alongside zoonotic diseases, poses significant public health risks. With 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases being zoonotic and 70 percent originating from wildlife, addressing these challenges is crucial. Deforestation, habitat fragmentation and wildlife trade create “spillover hotspots,” enabling pathogens to circulate in the wildlife-livestock-humans interface.
Forest-edge communities face heightened risks from diseases like brucellosis, leptospirosis, leishmaniasis, rabies, tuberculosis and anthrax. Wildlife are equally vulnerable to ‘reverse spillover’ reported canine distemper virus and tuberculosis in Nepal’s wild species.
Covid-19 pandemic and other outbreaks (Mpox, Ebola) highlighted the global consequences of poorly managed HWI, underscoring the urgency of integrating public health into conservation strategies to mitigate such risks.
Climate change exacerbates these risks by altering species distributions, habitat and migration patterns. Shifting temperature and precipitation disrupt wildlife foraging and breeding, pushing into human-dominated landscapes for searching for food and water. Concurrent habitat degradation reduces natural food supplies, intensifying crop raiding and livestock predation. Nepal, a biodiversity hotspot, is vulnerable to these cascading effects. The keystone species loss and ecosystem disruptions jeopardize the ecology essential for wildlife and local livelihoods.
Policy landscape
Nepal’s policy response has evolved to resolve the HWC interconnected challenges, zoonotic diseases and biodiversity loss. Adoption of ‘One Health Strategy 2019’ and ‘National Wildlife Health Action Plan 2023-2032’ aim to strengthen wildlife disease surveillance, conservation medicine, and inter-agency coordination. These policies establish a framework for managing risks at the human-animal-environment interface through an interdisciplinary lens.
However, challenges remain in implementation, including fragmented disease surveillance within protected areas and limited diagnostic capacity. Institutional silos among conservation, veterinary and public health authorities hinder real-time data sharing and coordinated responses. This impedes Nepal’s ability to proactively manage health threats at the interface.
Empowering local communities in buffer zones as frontline stakeholders is key to managing HWC. Residents, bearing the brunt of HWC, possess invaluable traditional ecological knowledge, including indigenous practices like crop guarding, seasonal land-use rotation and wildlife behavior interpretation. Strategies such as electric fences, predator-proof corrals and planting wildlife-unpalatable crops (peppermint) are effective. However, science-based, species-specific and landscape-specific conflict management strategies are recommended for more sustainable solutions.
Community-managed buffer zones around Chitwan National Park demonstrate how conservation can be economically beneficial through eco-tourism. Such incentives foster stewardship, transforming wildlife from threats to valued assets.
To shift from reactive conflict management to proactive coexistence, Nepal must invest in wildlife health surveillance, community resilience and economic incentives such as compensation schemes and eco-tourism revenue-sharing. This transition needs interdisciplinary collaboration, community awareness and effective policy into action.
Integrating the Buddhist philosophy, which emphasizes respect for all living beings and their freedom from suffering, can foster behavioral changes transforming HWC into opportunities for coexistence.
