Besides Loving the Beasts

India is not India without its wild animals. However, conservation of wildlife leads to misery for millions of people. It conflicts with the constitutional guarantee of people's right to life and property. It amounts to knowingly causing death, injury or property damage, a crime under the Indian Penal Code. Successful conservation spells doom and gloom for more people. Preserving dangerous animals costs the country billions but we are dead against earning anything from this indulgence. All in the name of our love for wildlife.
Wildlife corridors, the darling of the nature lovers of India, are like an expensive antibiotic with serious side effects and no guarantee of cure. We invite ever more devastating fires by preventing benign and benevolent forest fires. We have derecognized all protected areas and reserve forests through the Forest Rights Act. The way we do our wildlife conservation is perplexing. Such conservation is neither sustainable nor desirable.
H.S. Pabla, former Chief Wild Life Warden of Madhya Pradesh, says that conservation of wildlife can be and must be done differently. It has to be based on commonsense, pragmatism, science and sensible laws.