Wildlife Protection Act, barring glaring exceptions like the bandit Veerappan and as a result numbers of all the wildlife species has skyrocketed.
There has been another significant change. A branch of ecology termed optimal foraging theory considers factors relating to food acquisition by animals. Animals tend to feed in sucha fashion as to obtain the maximum amount of nutrients while expending as little time and effort as possible and encountering as little risk as possible. Sukumar has shown that even if elephants have the option of obtaining food in forest ecosystems, they invade agricultural areas and forage on crops which provide a much greater amount of nutrients for a given effort. Animals are smart and they quickly learn when new opportunities open up. Given Wildlife Protection Act many wild animals have learnt that they can invade croplands or even human invade habitations with impunity because people will not resist them. As a result, much greater food has become available to wild animals, further promoting growth in their numbers.
Human Wildlife Conflict
Human-wildlife conflict is endemic in today’s India. In March 2021 MrH S Pabla, former Chief wildlife Warden of Madhya Pradesh and Dr A J T John Singh, the well- known conservation biologist submitted a note to the Government, in which they stated: “Human-wildlife conflict is a humongous problem for conservation of wildlife in India. Nearly a thousand people are killed by wild animals like elephants, leopards, tigers and sloth bears while tens of thousands are injured each year.
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