BENGALURU: A study has found that Indian conservation policies over the last seven decades are biased in favour of big cats, especially tigers. Researchers from a number of academic and conservation institutions, including the National Centre for Biological Sciences, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Centre for Wildlife Studies, assessed various research papers, books and theses published between 1947 and 2020, to understand how research on carnivores was conducted and how the research affected conservation policies in the country.
The study, ‘Chasms in charismatic species research: Seventy years of carnivore science and its implications for conservation and policy in India’, included studies of over 1,800 papers, books and other research material. “India’s people have long shared spaces with carnivores, both large and small. Many cultures view humans and wildlife as two sides of the same coin. Studying such biocultural relationships, behaviour and decision-making can actually make carnivore conservation a lot more inclusive. Our study shows that we need to build capacity in multi-disciplinary approaches to address today’s conservation challenges,” said Dr Saloni Bhatia, co-author of the study.
While the researchers found that substantial contributions were made to the carnivore ecology field, especially in population monitoring and developing better tools for genetic research, many carnivorous species were overlooked in research. According to the study, research on carnivores has been largely in favour of big cats, with Bengal tigers acting as a major contributing factor towards conservation policy framing and environmental litigation. Meanwhile, species like mongooses, otters and civets are often overlooked.
“It is recommended that ongoing and future research efforts should focus on lesser-known species and their threatened habitats. They must combine social sciences with ecological studies and make carnivore science more democratic through establishing partnerships across diverse institutions as well as local communities that share space with conflict-prone carnivores,” the authors said in a statement.