• This project has summarized the large amount of research conducted in Southeastern Norway on conflicts between wildlife and humans.

Investigators: John Linnell (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research) and Ketil Skogen (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research)

• This project has conceptually explored the impacts that human-wildlife conflicts have on the challenges to implement international biodiversity conservation conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Investigators: John Linnell (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research) and Jorn Thomassen (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research)

Wildlife-human conflicts (WHC) are a serious obstacle to wildlife conservation and the livelihoods of people worldwide and are becoming more prevalent as human population increases, development expands, and global climate changes and other human and environmental factors put people and wildlife in greater direct competition for a shrinking resource base. In addition, as some wildlife conservation activities succeed, wildlife expands into human-dominated areas. In this context, a project on ‘Wildlife-human interactions: from conflict to coexistence in sustainable landscapes’ was initiated by the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, in February 2007. Funding was obtained from the Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi and the Research Council of Norway.

The main objective of the four-year project was to conduct a multi-dimensional analysis of wildlife-human interactions in a sample of Indian multi-use landscapes and one Norwegian landscape, with a view to understand conflicts and sustain mechanisms of coexistence. The studies span diverse contexts and landscapes where the loss of livelihood (crop or livestock) is the main source of conflict, and cases where the loss of life occurs, as well as instances where conflict is primarily over shared spaces. The project includes both social science and ecological studies on a range of species from herbivores, such as elephants, blackbuck, nilgai, and wild pig, carnivores including leopards and wolves, and marine species such as olive ridley and green turtles.

This is a collaborative project involving the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (CES, IISc), Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore (ATREE), Asian Nature Conservation Foundation, Bangalore (ANCF), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune (IISER), Kalpavriksh, Pune and Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore (NCF) from India and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Hedmark University College in Norway. The Norwegian partners have been involved in the joint planning of most of the cases, but mainly involved themselves in cases 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9. The project was coordinated by CES, IISc in India and NINA in Norway, who also liaisoned with the Royal Norwegian Embassy.