Human-Wildlife Conflicts patterns and underlying impacts: A systematic review

Human-Wildlife Conflicts patterns and underlying impacts: A systematic review | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Systematic Review Human-Wildlife Conflicts patterns and underlying impacts: A systematic review Thekke Thumbath Shameer, Priyambada Routray, Divinia Juanita, and 4 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3776626/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) is a term often misunderstood, with most people restricting its use to the damage to humans and property by wildlife and not vice versa, thereby leading to a biased approach to its resolution. HWC is rising, primarily due to a growing human population and associated habitat destruction. The lack of critical analyses in the HWC challenge has led to inadequate and poor responses. A systematic review of HWC across India is necessary to understand the trends, hotspots, and significant species involved, develop appropriate mitigation measures, and propose a policy-level framework to minimise its impact on humans and wildlife. For this review, around 246 papers from the past ten years (2012–2022) were collected which mentioned HWC in their keywords. After screening the papers, 172 papers published in 166 different journals were found to be relevant to the present study. Among those 172 papers, most HWC-related papers have been published in Karnataka, followed by Kerala and West Bengal. The highest conflict species seems to be the elephant, followed by wild pigs and leopards. Some other species involved in conflicts are tiger, nilgai, macaque, etc. More focused research is needed on HWC to analyse every factor influencing the rise of HWC in India. Introducing an interdisciplinary approach and involvement of multiple stakeholders could help better manage HWC in India. Wildlife Biology Human-Wildlife Conflict Conservation livestock depredation crop damage India Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Introduction Spreading civilisation and the rapid increase in human population globally have exploited natural resources beyond tolerable levels. This has further escalated extinction and threatened several species and their ecosystems (Gomez et al., 2021 ). It is known that humans have evolved and emerged by fighting with different species for survival. However, we have arrived at a time when we cannot escape coexisting with wildlife anymore, which demands us to explore various angles of human-wildlife coexistence (Jolly et al., 2022 ; Pooley et al., 2020 ). HWC needs an interdisciplinary approach that includes understanding human thoughts and behaviours, social psychology, etc., as a part of the focus (Teel et al., 2022 ). Humans and animals have been interacting negatively with increased dependence on natural resources, especially near protected areas (Prasad et al., 2020 ). Wild animals dispersing out of the secure regions cause conflicts with the local community (Turner et al., 2022 ). They wander into human habitats and raid or damage crops, attack or kill livestock, damage properties, etc. On the other hand, humans also engage in retaliatory killing of wildlife, which endangers both wildlife and humans (Sharma et al., 2021 ). Further, the change in land cover by rapid influence and response of human beings, especially in developing countries, causes habitat fragmentation between natural habitats. This fragmentation restricts the movement of free-ranging large-bodied mammals, E.g., elephants, leopards and tigers, resulting in all sorts of human-animal conflicts which further wreak havoc on the livelihoods of local communities (Karanth, 2017 : Mandal et al ., 2021) The encroachment of natural areas for agricultural purposes, settlements on the fringes of forest areas threatens ecological sustainability of wild animals’ habitat, resulting in extreme pressure and competition for resources (Billah, 2021). India has a total forest cover of 7,13,789 km2, 21.71% of the country’s geographical area (FSI 2021). Forest types, from tropical evergreen to dry deciduous forests, accommodate a variety of endemic fauna and flora. However, forest resources are simultaneously being used to uplift the economic status of the local population. Many buildings and high infrastructures in the form of roads and flyovers are being constructed for better connectivity, eventually reducing forest cover. This invariably leads to forest fragmentation and loss of the priceless gene pool and also causes disturbance to free-ranging wild animals in their fundamental natural niche. This, in return, escalates towards human-animal negative interactions (Desai et al., 2021 ). Human-wildlife conflict is one of the major issues where policymakers and conservationists find difficulties in arriving at lasting solutions. These issues have caused the extinction and decline of several abundant species globally (Sime et al., 2022 ). HWC has become an essential aspect of conservation these days. To achieve conservation goals in a full-fledged manner, we must address human-wildlife conflicts from a socio-ecological perspective, including cultural, political, geographical and wildlife perspectives. Conservation and human welfare are like two sides of a coin; focusing on one thing without the other complementing it is not productive. Hence, it is essential to understand the root cause of such conservation issues and develop scientific management solutions to minimise its impact. Before understanding and applying new techniques that will help us reduce the HWC to some level, it is necessary to understand the driving force behind the rising HWC cases in India. The major driving force towards HWC would be an increase in human population and, to accommodate them, forest cover and other habitats being reduced, leaving wildlife with no option other than to interact with humans for survival. People living near wildlife habitats are more vulnerable because of their livestock, which attracts predators, and nutritious crops, which attract crop raiders (Sharma et al., 2021 ). An insight into the studies done over the years in India Over the years, many conservationists have worked on various conflict species across India to try and figure out ways to reduce conflicts. A study conducted at the Kanha-Achanakmar corridor (Ahmed et al., 2012 ) reveals that leopards are primarily involved in livestock depredation and sloth bears in human casualties. Despite these conflicts, people show a positive attitude towards carnivore conservation. Another study shows the patterns of livestock depredation by snow leopards and wolves in upper Spiti Valley, and the local people reveal that the livestock depredation caused by snow leopards is less than the actual claim (Suryawanshi et al., 2013 ). The aggression between rhesus macaques and humans is also interrelated, and humans show more aggression towards macaques than vice versa (Beisner et al. , 2014). Another study conducted in Thrissur, Kerala (Govind and Jayson, 2016 ) shows that crop damage is the highest type of conflict, and the Asian elephant seems to be causing the highest. A study in southern Telangana reports that around 36% of crop damage is caused by wild animals, especially wild pigs (Rao et al., 2015 ). Most human casualties caused by elephants in the Baripada district of Odisha are caused by aggressive male elephants and crop damage by elephant herds (Mishra et al., 2015 ). The average farmers are medium (somewhat?) tolerant towards the conflict species (Senthilkumar et al. 2016 ). Some factors driving HWC in West Bengal are population growth, forest encroachment, etc. The study's conclusion indicates that the key to coexistence lies in education and awareness (Mukherjee, 2018). A similar study was done in Tamil Nadu (Dharmaraj and Ramakrishnan, 2017 ), and the research shows rapid conversion of forest lands into cropland and infrastructure and subsequent loss of forest cover as the significant cause for conflicts. A study on Macaque conflict in Karnataka indicates that the macaques always find a way around the mitigation measures applied by the crop owners (Kumara and Diandra, 2018 ). (Balodi and Anwar, 2018 ) local people's cultural beliefs and practices have severely altered the Kilpura-Khatima-Surai wildlife corridor. They suggest understanding people’s behaviour towards specific species conservation could help us with community-based conservation. (Nair and Jayson, 2019 ) This means more research must be conducted on Indian crested porcupines to develop mitigation measures to reduce conflicts. The Pattern of carnivore interaction among the central Indian protected areas and outside protected areas provides some insights into applying socio-ecological assessments to determine conflict-prone areas and better ways to manage the conflicts (Srivathsa et al., 2019 ). (Bharali et al., 2020 ) suggests spatial mapping, camera trapping and indirect survey methods could help identify leopard-prone areas, which could help minimise conflicts in overlapping landscapes. According to (Naik et al., 2020 ), most of the crop damage happens during maturity and at the time of harvest, and most of the livestock depredation is caused by leopards, wild dogs (wild dogs, is it mentioned in the paper? Please check), etc. Livestock predation and property damage by brown bears in the Ladakh region are rising rapidly, causing negative attitudes among the people towards their conservation. Functioning Compensation policies more efficiently may help the situation (Maheshwari et al., 2021 ). A study conducted in the Golaghat area of Assam shows that using solar fences could effectively minimise conflicts (Das et al., 2022 ). (Majumder, 2022 ) suggests better management with multiple stakeholder involvement is necessary to reduce the HWC in the state. This review focuses on a varied range of data analysis that shows the HWC studies conducted across Indian states, species involved, type of conflicts, the yearly number of studies, connectivity of keywords, etc., in India over the past ten years. Overall, this review is a small effort towards understanding the trends and identifying research gaps for reducing HWC and management issues across India. Material and Methods We conducted a review based on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews) model (Moher et al. 2016 ) (Fig. 1 ). We used search engines such as ScienceDirect ( www.sciencedirect.com ), Web of Science ( www.webofscience.com ), and Google Scholar ( www.scholar.google . com). We focused on studies conducted across India in the past ten years, from 2012–2022. These included keywords such as human-wildlife conflict, wildlife, animal, crop depredation, crop loss, crop raiding, crop damage, livestock depredation, and livestock mortality. Other keywords and phrases such as a human attack, retaliatory killing, human-leopard conflict, human-elephant conflict, and human-wild pig conflict were also used. The screening of abstracts was the first step in selecting research papers for inclusion in this review. Further, the articles were collected for India and categorised accordingly to achieve each objective. The publications were limited to journal articles. Additionally, we used a spreadsheet to enter data chronologically and organise them into authors, year of publication, species, type of conflict, states, etc. The articles with multiple species records were assigned to each species category separately. Analysis We mapped conflict zones based on literature articles and categorised the number of studies state-wise. We converted that data into spatial data and plotted it in India state shape files. We classified the conflicts into high and low categories based on the conflict studies reported across the country. The highly categorised states across the country are concluded to be high-conflict zones. From the years of publications, we made a graph of year-wise studies which show the temporal pattern of HWC studies conducted in India. We prepared a bar graph showing the relation between the number of studies and the distribution of conflict species. We categorised types of conflicts into animal death/ injury, crop damage, human death/ injury, and livestock/ property damage and quantified the number of species involved in the conflict. To visualise and construct a bibliometric network, we used VOSviewer ( https://www.vosviewer.com ). In this figure, we imagined the frequency of keywords to understand the most focused area of research related to HWC in India. The lines in the graph indicate the keywords' connectivity, and the link's intensity provides the number of articles that used similar keywords. We used RStudio (version 2022.07.1) to perform all the other mentioned analyses using the package ggplot2. RESULTS Spatial and temporal pattern In this systematic review, the highest number of studies were found to be published in the states such as Karnataka (9.02%), Kerala (8.27%), West Bengal (7.89%), Tamil Nadu (7.51%) and Uttarakhand (7.51%). Moderate studies were published from states such as Assam (6.39%), Madhya Pradesh (6.01%), Odisha (5.61%), Jammu and Kashmir (5.63%), Rajasthan (5.26%), Himachal Pradesh (4.13%) and Maharashtra (3.75%). Low studies were published in states like New Delhi (0.37%), Meghalaya (0.37%), Mizoram (0.37%) etc (Fig. 2 ). The temporal graph indicated that more studies were published in 2018. There was a sharp decline during 2019-20 due to the COVID situation, and after 2020, there was a sharp increase in publications (Fig. 3 ). Biological components We found that 100 species were recorded to be involved in HWC from the generated data. These include mammals, reptiles, rodents, birds etc. Elephants (n = 94), wild pigs (n = 65), leopards (n = 63), and tigers (n = 42) are found to be the most conflict species, whereas Indian grey mongoose (n = 1), hog deer (n = 1), spotted deer (n = 1) etc. are the most minor conflict species (Fig. 4 ). Of those 100 species, 45 were involved in crop damage, 34 caused livestock depredation and property damage, 24 involved human killing/ injury or attacks, and eight involved animal death/ injury (Fig. 5 ). Elephants were found to be involved in almost all types of conflicts. Bibliometric networks analysis The bibliometric networks analysis revealed that 161 keywords were frequently used. Out of these, the keyword India was repeated 93 times, HWC 78 times, conservation 53 times, western ghats 37 times, and compensation was repeated 37 times. Among those keywords, carnivores such as leopard and tiger were repeated 57 and 50 times, respectively. In the type of conflict terms, such crop damage was mentioned 29 times, livestock depredation 20 times, crop raiding 13 times, elephants 28 times and human casualties were repeated six times, etc. [Fig. 6 ] Compared to keywords with low occurrence, there is high link strength for those frequently occurring keywords, such as India. HWC, compensation, conservation, wildlife and mitigation were among the top keywords with high link strength. Conflict type The most involved conflict type is crop damage, followed by livestock attack/ property damage. There are moderate reports of human death/ injuries from the studies. Very few studies reported animal deaths/injuries. Elephants, bears, leopards and wild pigs are found to be involved in all types of conflicts. Other species, such as tigers, gaurs, macaques, jackals and wolves, reportedly involve at least three types of disputes (supplementary table 1). Discussion The review identifies felids as the significant family involved in HWC in India. Conflict with humans affects 75% of the world’s Felidae species, and the severity increases with their body masses (Ranade et al., 2015 ). Due to their more extensive habitat range and dietary preferences, felids are mainly involved in conflict with humans (Inskip and Zimmermann, 2009 ). They mostly conflict with humans while attacking livestock (Garrote et al. , 2012). To prevent felid attacks on livestock, retaliation of the affected people causes death or injuries to these species. This has caused several threats to many endangered felid species (e.g., tiger and leopard). Among the felids, mostly leopards have been studied for conflicts in India. They have adapted to live in the forest fringes of India due to their behavioural plasticity and wide range of dietary choices, because of which they often come into human habitats in search of food and get involved with conflicts (Athreya et al. , 2013). Leopard conflicts have a long history in India, and during the 20th century, there were reports of leopard attacks on humans and leopards being killed as man-eaters (Naha et al., 2020 ). The second most studied species is the tiger. There is a negative attitude towards tiger conservation across the states due to their involvement in livestock depredation and human attacks. This has reduced local peoples’ support and help towards tiger conservation (Goodrich, 2010). The well-managed protected areas provide sufficient food and shelter; however, the young tigers disperse to the human-dominant landscapes for territories, and the old/wound tigers get involved in conflicts. Worldwide, felid human conflict is the most urgent conservation problem, yet the effort to synthesise its knowledge is less (Inskip and Zimmermann, 2009 ). Elephantidae is the second-highest family studied in India for HWC. Studies find that elephant conflicts occur due to the expansion of human settlements and agriculture fields across Asia and Africa and the loss of natural forest and habitat fragmentation (Shaffer et al., 2019 ). Globally, Sri Lanka had the highest elephant fatality and second highest number of human deaths (Prakash et al., 2020 ). According to the Project Elephant Census 2017, India is home to 29,964 elephants, the largest in Asia. With increasing human population densities, elephants and people are forced to share land and resources, leading to frequent and often fatal conflict cases. In India, only 22 per cent of elephant habitat is found within our protected area network – the remaining elephant range lies outside, in places now overrun by people (Chartier et al., 2011 ). Elephants are involved in crop raiding, property damage, house damage, injuries, and human deaths (Gubbi, 2012 ). Apart from that, poaching is also a significant conflict for elephant conservation in India. Wild pigs are the most studied conflict species, following elephants. They are distributed across all the states of India. The population of feral pigs is increasing as they are prolific breeders and breed throughout the year (Senthilkumar, 2016). Crop damage is the most severe issue reported by human-wild-pig conflict studies, and it mainly occurs in areas adjoining the forest boundary (Milda et al., 2022 ). Other species, such as deer, are also studied in conflict and observed to be more involved in crop damage. Crops and fruit orchards are often raided by wild ungulates, primates, granivores and frugivorous birds, which cause damage to both food crops and young shoots of other crops and plantations (Manral et al., 2016 ). These types of conflicts often lead to substantial economic losses, and as a result, there is an increase in a negative attitude towards protecting these wild animals. Conclusion This article provides insight into the HWC studies being conducted in India. HWC tend to occur in the intersection of forest habitat and human habitation. Forest fragmentation and human encroachment are the leading causes of HWC. We found Karnataka, Kerala, and West Bengal to have the highest number of published conflict studies. It shows more research is being conducted in these states and indicates the need for more studies in the other conflict states. Among the various conflict animals, felids, elephants and wild pigs were found to be causing the most HWC cases. These studies show the different types of conflicts, such as crop damage (mostly occurring conflict), livestock depredation, human injury/ death, and property damages. Most species are involved in crop damage; animal injury and death are the lowest. The data suggested that the HWC studies mainly cover aspects such as human death, injury, livestock depredation, crop and property damage, etc. and other elements such as animal death due to retaliatory / revenge killing, electrocution, railways accidents, poaching, require more attention. The study analysed the number of research articles published in the past ten years, and the temporal pattern shows an increase in HWC studies. The steep increase in the graph indicates that conservationists and researchers in India are focusing on the HWC aspect of conservation. 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Human-Elephant Conflict in Sri Lanka: Patterns and Extent . 51 , 16–25. Manral U., Sengupta S., Hussain S.A., Rana S. and Badola R. (2016). HWC in India:A Review of Economic Implication of Loss and Preventive Measures. Indian Forester , [S.l.], p. 928-940, oct. 2016. Moher D., Stewart L. and Shekelle P. (2016). Implementing PRISMA-P: recommendations for prospective authors. Systematic Reviews , 5 (1), 1–2. Supplementary Files Supplimentarytable1.docx supplemintarytable2specieslistandiucn.xlsx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-3776626","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Systematic Review","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":261236779,"identity":"c855b246-4766-45e7-b0f1-1fc1b50f92d7","order_by":0,"name":"Thekke Thumbath Shameer","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA3ElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDACCQiVwNjAfICBsYEULcwNbAkkamFv4DEgTov87OanGz5U3MvjnZHzTeLnDhs5BvbDRzfg02Jw55jZzRlnioslZ+Ruk+w9k2bMwJOWdgOvFokEs9u8bQmJG4FaJHjbDic2SPCY4dUiPyP92+2//xIS99/IeSb5lxgtDDdyzG4zNiQkNs7IYZMmyhaDGzllN3uOAbX0PDO2lm1LM2Yj5Begw7bd+FED1NKe/PDm2zYbOX72w8fwOwwJsIDjiI1Y5SDA/IEU1aNgFIyCUTByAADGElKzYjd4aQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2306-1821","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Thekke","middleName":"Thumbath","lastName":"Shameer","suffix":""},{"id":261236780,"identity":"7dca80f9-f842-42b2-b288-0aa348f73eec","order_by":1,"name":"Priyambada Routray","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Priyambada","middleName":"","lastName":"Routray","suffix":""},{"id":261236781,"identity":"4551d78f-0f92-4beb-8568-ebed014c02f0","order_by":2,"name":"Divinia Juanita","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Divinia","middleName":"","lastName":"Juanita","suffix":""},{"id":261236782,"identity":"851532ea-1ca8-4d1f-8b97-5a5d59948a36","order_by":3,"name":"Udhayan","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"","middleName":"","lastName":"Udhayan","suffix":""},{"id":261236783,"identity":"27971310-7f25-4905-854b-a27aca91faac","order_by":4,"name":"Rangaswamy Kanchana","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Rangaswamy","middleName":"","lastName":"Kanchana","suffix":""},{"id":261236784,"identity":"1acbccad-7a46-4226-8a7f-0a7301ab4b70","order_by":5,"name":"Mannika Govindan Ganesan","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Mannika","middleName":"Govindan","lastName":"Ganesan","suffix":""},{"id":261236785,"identity":"c0381061-59a4-4d84-89af-48868c1f75ce","order_by":6,"name":"Dhayanithi Vasantha Kumari","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Advanced Institute for wildlife conservation","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Dhayanithi","middleName":"Vasantha","lastName":"Kumari","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2023-12-19 11:34:10","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":{"humanSubjects":false,"vertebrateSubjects":true,"conflictsOfInterestStatement":false,"humanSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false,"humanSubjectConsent":false,"humanSubjectClinicalTrial":false,"humanSubjectCaseReport":false,"vertebrateSubjectEthicalGuidelines":true},"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-3776626/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3776626/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":49073098,"identity":"8da7ade3-d57a-43b5-97de-989e4bcbee0d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:25:30","extension":"jpg","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":306401,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003emethodology and selection process used in the systematic review are depicted as a flow chart. (Mohar et al. 2016)\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/63df2259a3464c704023d1cd.jpg"},{"id":49072458,"identity":"b141877d-8273-4780-b917-5aa259f4b165","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:17:30","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":29034,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eMap showing the number of studies across Indian states\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Fig1mapshowingthenumberofstudiesacrossIndianstates.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/a2c61f33803e1aac69da75be.png"},{"id":49072454,"identity":"262237eb-2d42-4132-b322-5d9295b99d1c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:17:30","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":5132,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eTemporal pattern of studies on HWC in India\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Fig2temporalpatternofstudiesonHWCinIndia1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/bebe65616b992a4a35ca295c.png"},{"id":49073097,"identity":"98efd35f-a748-4d10-b315-33868c3bdd8c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:25:30","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":8868,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eDistribution of family-wise conflict species \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Fig3distributionoffamilywiseconflictspecies1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/4caccf8480b6e06a3f21c98e.png"},{"id":49072457,"identity":"ee51401c-3dff-4714-aa71-5503810273cc","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:17:30","extension":"png","order_by":5,"title":"Figure 5","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":5002,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eGraph showing the type of conflicts of HWC\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Fig4graphshowingtypeofconflictsofHWC1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/6775da87783bca3f8e0116be.png"},{"id":49072461,"identity":"602d547e-94f0-4571-bbb9-f3b50fcc1a77","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:17:30","extension":"png","order_by":6,"title":"Figure 6","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":799295,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eVOSViwer network of keywords co-occurrence for HWC articles published in India.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Fig51.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/8176bbb02e7af12a78b55392.png"},{"id":49073315,"identity":"eba80444-3c8f-46db-bac7-dcbfda6f1fae","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:33:30","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":813341,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/ef668a78-72d8-4fc3-bdd0-caffec4cb262.pdf"},{"id":49072456,"identity":"545eaea8-6ced-4211-9319-799b71055e2a","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:17:30","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":33643,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Supplimentarytable1.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/a0f80b07b2aa56a52959ce46.docx"},{"id":49073096,"identity":"edefa780-bff8-44ee-a947-c5419e02fad4","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-01-02 17:25:30","extension":"xlsx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":12504,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"supplemintarytable2specieslistandiucn.xlsx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3776626/v1/17597658f496d0af21dd6377.xlsx"}],"financialInterests":"","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHuman-Wildlife Conflicts patterns and underlying impacts: A systematic review\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eSpreading civilisation and the rapid increase in human population globally have exploited natural resources beyond tolerable levels. This has further escalated extinction and threatened several species and their ecosystems (Gomez et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). It is known that humans have evolved and emerged by fighting with different species for survival. However, we have arrived at a time when we cannot escape coexisting with wildlife anymore, which demands us to explore various angles of human-wildlife coexistence (Jolly et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Pooley et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). HWC needs an interdisciplinary approach that includes understanding human thoughts and behaviours, social psychology, etc., as a part of the focus (Teel et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Humans and animals have been interacting negatively with increased dependence on natural resources, especially near protected areas (Prasad et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Wild animals dispersing out of the secure regions cause conflicts with the local community (Turner et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). They wander into human habitats and raid or damage crops, attack or kill livestock, damage properties, etc. On the other hand, humans also engage in retaliatory killing of wildlife, which endangers both wildlife and humans (Sharma et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Further, the change in land cover by rapid influence and response of human beings, especially in developing countries, causes habitat fragmentation between natural habitats. This fragmentation restricts the movement of free-ranging large-bodied mammals, E.g., elephants, leopards and tigers, resulting in all sorts of human-animal conflicts which further wreak havoc on the livelihoods of local communities (Karanth, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e: Mandal \u003cem\u003eet al\u003c/em\u003e., 2021) The encroachment of natural areas for agricultural purposes, settlements on the fringes of forest areas threatens ecological sustainability of wild animals\u0026rsquo; habitat, resulting in extreme pressure and competition for resources (Billah, 2021).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndia has a total forest cover of 7,13,789 km2, 21.71% of the country\u0026rsquo;s geographical area (FSI 2021). Forest types, from tropical evergreen to dry deciduous forests, accommodate a variety of endemic fauna and flora. However, forest resources are simultaneously being used to uplift the economic status of the local population. Many buildings and high infrastructures in the form of roads and flyovers are being constructed for better connectivity, eventually reducing forest cover. This invariably leads to forest fragmentation and loss of the priceless gene pool and also causes disturbance to free-ranging wild animals in their fundamental natural niche. This, in return, escalates towards human-animal negative interactions (Desai et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHuman-wildlife conflict is one of the major issues where policymakers and conservationists find difficulties in arriving at lasting solutions. These issues have caused the extinction and decline of several abundant species globally (Sime et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). HWC has become an essential aspect of conservation these days. To achieve conservation goals in a full-fledged manner, we must address human-wildlife conflicts from a socio-ecological perspective, including cultural, political, geographical and wildlife perspectives. Conservation and human welfare are like two sides of a coin; focusing on one thing without the other complementing it is not productive. Hence, it is essential to understand the root cause of such conservation issues and develop scientific management solutions to minimise its impact. Before understanding and applying new techniques that will help us reduce the HWC to some level, it is necessary to understand the driving force behind the rising HWC cases in India. The major driving force towards HWC would be an increase in human population and, to accommodate them, forest cover and other habitats being reduced, leaving wildlife with no option other than to interact with humans for survival. People living near wildlife habitats are more vulnerable because of their livestock, which attracts predators, and nutritious crops, which attract crop raiders (Sharma et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAn insight into the studies done over the years in India\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver the years, many conservationists have worked on various conflict species across India to try and figure out ways to reduce conflicts. A study conducted at the Kanha-Achanakmar corridor (Ahmed et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) reveals that leopards are primarily involved in livestock depredation and sloth bears in human casualties. Despite these conflicts, people show a positive attitude towards carnivore conservation. Another study shows the patterns of livestock depredation by snow leopards and wolves in upper Spiti Valley, and the local people reveal that the livestock depredation caused by snow leopards is less than the actual claim (Suryawanshi et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). The aggression between rhesus macaques and humans is also interrelated, and humans show more aggression towards macaques than vice versa (Beisner \u003cem\u003eet al.\u003c/em\u003e, 2014). Another study conducted in Thrissur, Kerala (Govind and Jayson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) shows that crop damage is the highest type of conflict, and the Asian elephant seems to be causing the highest. A study in southern Telangana reports that around 36% of crop damage is caused by wild animals, especially wild pigs (Rao et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Most human casualties caused by elephants in the Baripada district of Odisha are caused by aggressive male elephants and crop damage by elephant herds (Mishra et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). The average farmers are medium (somewhat?) tolerant towards the conflict species (Senthilkumar et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Some factors driving HWC in West Bengal are population growth, forest encroachment, etc. The study's conclusion indicates that the key to coexistence lies in education and awareness (Mukherjee, 2018). A similar study was done in Tamil Nadu (Dharmaraj and Ramakrishnan, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e), and the research shows rapid conversion of forest lands into cropland and infrastructure and subsequent loss of forest cover as the significant cause for conflicts. A study on Macaque conflict in Karnataka indicates that the macaques always find a way around the mitigation measures applied by the crop owners (Kumara and Diandra, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). (Balodi and Anwar, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) local people's cultural beliefs and practices have severely altered the Kilpura-Khatima-Surai wildlife corridor. They suggest understanding people\u0026rsquo;s behaviour towards specific species conservation could help us with community-based conservation. (Nair and Jayson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) This means more research must be conducted on Indian crested porcupines to develop mitigation measures to reduce conflicts. The Pattern of carnivore interaction among the central Indian protected areas and outside protected areas provides some insights into applying socio-ecological assessments to determine conflict-prone areas and better ways to manage the conflicts (Srivathsa et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). (Bharali et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) suggests spatial mapping, camera trapping and indirect survey methods could help identify leopard-prone areas, which could help minimise conflicts in overlapping landscapes. According to (Naik et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e), most of the crop damage happens during maturity and at the time of harvest, and most of the livestock depredation is caused by leopards, wild dogs (wild dogs, is it mentioned in the paper? Please check), etc. Livestock predation and property damage by brown bears in the Ladakh region are rising rapidly, causing negative attitudes among the people towards their conservation. Functioning Compensation policies more efficiently may help the situation (Maheshwari et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). A study conducted in the Golaghat area of Assam shows that using solar fences could effectively minimise conflicts (Das et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). (Majumder, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e) suggests better management with multiple stakeholder involvement is necessary to reduce the HWC in the state.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis review focuses on a varied range of data analysis that shows the HWC studies conducted across Indian states, species involved, type of conflicts, the yearly number of studies, connectivity of keywords, etc., in India over the past ten years. Overall, this review is a small effort towards understanding the trends and identifying research gaps for reducing HWC and management issues across India.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Material and Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003eWe conducted a review based on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews) model (Moher et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig6\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e). We used search engines such as ScienceDirect (\u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ewww.sciencedirect.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e), Web of Science (\u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ewww.webofscience.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"http://www.webofscience.com\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e), and Google Scholar (\u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ewww.scholar.google\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"http://www.scholar.google\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e. com). We focused on studies conducted across India in the past ten years, from 2012\u0026ndash;2022. These included keywords such as human-wildlife conflict, wildlife, animal, crop depredation, crop loss, crop raiding, crop damage, livestock depredation, and livestock mortality. Other keywords and phrases such as a human attack, retaliatory killing, human-leopard conflict, human-elephant conflict, and human-wild pig conflict were also used. The screening of abstracts was the first step in selecting research papers for inclusion in this review. Further, the articles were collected for India and categorised accordingly to achieve each objective. The publications were limited to journal articles. Additionally, we used a spreadsheet to enter data chronologically and organise them into authors, year of publication, species, type of conflict, states, etc. The articles with multiple species records were assigned to each species category separately.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAnalysis\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe mapped conflict zones based on literature articles and categorised the number of studies state-wise. We converted that data into spatial data and plotted it in India state shape files. We classified the conflicts into high and low categories based on the conflict studies reported across the country. The highly categorised states across the country are concluded to be high-conflict zones. From the years of publications, we made a graph of year-wise studies which show the temporal pattern of HWC studies conducted in India. We prepared a bar graph showing the relation between the number of studies and the distribution of conflict species. We categorised types of conflicts into animal death/ injury, crop damage, human death/ injury, and livestock/ property damage and quantified the number of species involved in the conflict. To visualise and construct a bibliometric network, we used VOSviewer (\u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://www.vosviewer.com\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://www.vosviewer.com\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e). In this figure, we imagined the frequency of keywords to understand the most focused area of research related to HWC in India. The lines in the graph indicate the keywords' connectivity, and the link's intensity provides the number of articles that used similar keywords. We used RStudio (version 2022.07.1) to perform all the other mentioned analyses using the package ggplot2.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"RESULTS","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec6\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eSpatial and temporal pattern\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn this systematic review, the highest number of studies were found to be published in the states such as Karnataka (9.02%), Kerala (8.27%), West Bengal (7.89%), Tamil Nadu (7.51%) and Uttarakhand (7.51%). Moderate studies were published from states such as Assam (6.39%), Madhya Pradesh (6.01%), Odisha (5.61%), Jammu and Kashmir (5.63%), Rajasthan (5.26%), Himachal Pradesh (4.13%) and Maharashtra (3.75%). Low studies were published in states like New Delhi (0.37%), Meghalaya (0.37%), Mizoram (0.37%) etc (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe temporal graph indicated that more studies were published in 2018. There was a sharp decline during 2019-20 due to the COVID situation, and after 2020, there was a sharp increase in publications (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec7\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eBiological components\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe found that 100 species were recorded to be involved in HWC from the generated data. These include mammals, reptiles, rodents, birds etc. Elephants (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;94), wild pigs (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;65), leopards (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;63), and tigers (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;42) are found to be the most conflict species, whereas Indian grey mongoose (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1), hog deer (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1), spotted deer (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1) etc. are the most minor conflict species (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOf those 100 species, 45 were involved in crop damage, 34 caused livestock depredation and property damage, 24 involved human killing/ injury or attacks, and eight involved animal death/ injury (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e). Elephants were found to be involved in almost all types of conflicts.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eBibliometric networks analysis\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe bibliometric networks analysis revealed that 161 keywords were frequently used. Out of these, the keyword India was repeated 93 times, HWC 78 times, conservation 53 times, western ghats 37 times, and compensation was repeated 37 times. Among those keywords, carnivores such as leopard and tiger were repeated 57 and 50 times, respectively. In the type of conflict terms, such crop damage was mentioned 29 times, livestock depredation 20 times, crop raiding 13 times, elephants 28 times and human casualties were repeated six times, etc. [Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e]\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCompared to keywords with low occurrence, there is high link strength for those frequently occurring keywords, such as India. HWC, compensation, conservation, wildlife and mitigation were among the top keywords with high link strength.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec9\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eConflict type\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe most involved conflict type is crop damage, followed by livestock attack/ property damage. There are moderate reports of human death/ injuries from the studies. Very few studies reported animal deaths/injuries. Elephants, bears, leopards and wild pigs are found to be involved in all types of conflicts. Other species, such as tigers, gaurs, macaques, jackals and wolves, reportedly involve at least three types of disputes (supplementary table 1).\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe review identifies felids as the significant family involved in HWC in India. Conflict with humans affects 75% of the world\u0026rsquo;s Felidae species, and the severity increases with their body masses (Ranade et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Due to their more extensive habitat range and dietary preferences, felids are mainly involved in conflict with humans (Inskip and Zimmermann, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). They mostly conflict with humans while attacking livestock (Garrote \u003cem\u003eet al.\u003c/em\u003e, 2012). To prevent felid attacks on livestock, retaliation of the affected people causes death or injuries to these species. This has caused several threats to many endangered felid species (e.g., tiger and leopard). Among the felids, mostly leopards have been studied for conflicts in India. They have adapted to live in the forest fringes of India due to their behavioural plasticity and wide range of dietary choices, because of which they often come into human habitats in search of food and get involved with conflicts (Athreya \u003cem\u003eet al.\u003c/em\u003e, 2013). Leopard conflicts have a long history in India, and during the 20th century, there were reports of leopard attacks on humans and leopards being killed as man-eaters (Naha et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). The second most studied species is the tiger. There is a negative attitude towards tiger conservation across the states due to their involvement in livestock depredation and human attacks. This has reduced local peoples\u0026rsquo; support and help towards tiger conservation (Goodrich, 2010). The well-managed protected areas provide sufficient food and shelter; however, the young tigers disperse to the human-dominant landscapes for territories, and the old/wound tigers get involved in conflicts. Worldwide, felid human conflict is the most urgent conservation problem, yet the effort to synthesise its knowledge is less (Inskip and Zimmermann, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElephantidae is the second-highest family studied in India for HWC. Studies find that elephant conflicts occur due to the expansion of human settlements and agriculture fields across Asia and Africa and the loss of natural forest and habitat fragmentation (Shaffer et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Globally, Sri Lanka had the highest elephant fatality and second highest number of human deaths (Prakash et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). According to the Project Elephant Census 2017, India is home to 29,964 elephants, the largest in Asia. With increasing human population densities, elephants and people are forced to share land and resources, leading to frequent and often fatal conflict cases. In India, only 22 per cent of elephant habitat is found within our protected area network \u0026ndash; the remaining elephant range lies outside, in places now overrun by people (Chartier et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e). Elephants are involved in crop raiding, property damage, house damage, injuries, and human deaths (Gubbi, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). Apart from that, poaching is also a significant conflict for elephant conservation in India.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWild pigs are the most studied conflict species, following elephants. They are distributed across all the states of India. The population of feral pigs is increasing as they are prolific breeders and breed throughout the year (Senthilkumar, 2016). Crop damage is the most severe issue reported by human-wild-pig conflict studies, and it mainly occurs in areas adjoining the forest boundary (Milda et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Other species, such as deer, are also studied in conflict and observed to be more involved in crop damage. Crops and fruit orchards are often raided by wild ungulates, primates, granivores and frugivorous birds, which cause damage to both food crops and young shoots of other crops and plantations (Manral et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). These types of conflicts often lead to substantial economic losses, and as a result, there is an increase in a negative attitude towards protecting these wild animals.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis article provides insight into the HWC studies being conducted in India. HWC tend to occur in the intersection of forest habitat and human habitation. Forest fragmentation and human encroachment are the leading causes of HWC. We found Karnataka, Kerala, and West Bengal to have the highest number of published conflict studies. It shows more research is being conducted in these states and indicates the need for more studies in the other conflict states.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong the various conflict animals, felids, elephants and wild pigs were found to be causing the most HWC cases. These studies show the different types of conflicts, such as crop damage (mostly occurring conflict), livestock depredation, human injury/ death, and property damages. Most species are involved in crop damage; animal injury and death are the lowest. The data suggested that the HWC studies mainly cover aspects such as human death, injury, livestock depredation, crop and property damage, etc. and other elements such as animal death due to retaliatory / revenge killing, electrocution, railways accidents, poaching, require more attention.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe study analysed the number of research articles published in the past ten years, and the temporal pattern shows an increase in HWC studies. The steep increase in the graph indicates that conservationists and researchers in India are focusing on the HWC aspect of conservation. HWC management involves varied elements such as policy making, conservation education, implementation of laws, behavioural studies, economic and natural resource management, etc., while keeping in mind that there is no conservation without humans. Hence, conservation education and awareness should be prioritised among the local and tribal people residing inside and outside forests. Conservation educators should make them understand the ecosystem services the forest provides and explain the benefits of sustainable use of forests.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003eCompeting interests: The authors declare no competing interests.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMandal M. and Chatterjee N.D. (2021). Spatial alteration of fragmented forest landscape for improving structural quality of habitat: a case study from Radhanagar Forest Range, Bankura District, West Bengal, India. \u003cem\u003eGeology, Ecology, and Landscapes\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e(4), 252\u0026ndash;259. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGomez L., Wright B., Shepherd C.R. and Joseph T. (2021). 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Factors driving human\u0026ndash;wild pig interactions: implications for wildlife conflict management in southern parts of India. \u003cem\u003eBiological Invasions\u003c/em\u003e. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePrakash T.G.S., Wijeratne A. and Fernando P. (2020). \u003cem\u003eHuman-Elephant Conflict in Sri Lanka: Patterns and Extent\u003c/em\u003e. \u003cem\u003e51\u003c/em\u003e, 16\u0026ndash;25. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eManral U., Sengupta S., Hussain S.A., Rana S. and Badola R. (2016). HWC in India:A Review of Economic Implication of Loss and Preventive Measures. \u003cstrong\u003eIndian Forester\u003c/strong\u003e, [S.l.], p. 928-940, oct. 2016. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMoher D., Stewart L. and Shekelle P. (2016). Implementing PRISMA-P: recommendations for prospective authors. \u003cem\u003eSystematic Reviews\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e(1), 1\u0026ndash;2.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"advanced institute for wildlife conservation","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Human-Wildlife Conflict, Conservation, livestock depredation, crop damage, India","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-3776626/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3776626/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eHuman-wildlife conflict (HWC) is a term often misunderstood, with most people restricting its use to the damage to humans and property by wildlife and not vice versa, thereby leading to a biased approach to its resolution. HWC is rising, primarily due to a growing human population and associated habitat destruction. The lack of critical analyses in the HWC challenge has led to inadequate and poor responses. A systematic review of HWC across India is necessary to understand the trends, hotspots, and significant species involved, develop appropriate mitigation measures, and propose a policy-level framework to minimise its impact on humans and wildlife. For this review, around 246 papers from the past ten years (2012\u0026ndash;2022) were collected which mentioned HWC in their keywords. After screening the papers, 172 papers published in 166 different journals were found to be relevant to the present study. Among those 172 papers, most HWC-related papers have been published in Karnataka, followed by Kerala and West Bengal. The highest conflict species seems to be the elephant, followed by wild pigs and leopards. Some other species involved in conflicts are tiger, nilgai, macaque, etc. More focused research is needed on HWC to analyse every factor influencing the rise of HWC in India. Introducing an interdisciplinary approach and involvement of multiple stakeholders could help better manage HWC in India.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Human-Wildlife Conflicts patterns and underlying impacts: A systematic review","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2024-01-02 17:17:25","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-3776626/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"49221314-84e3-4383-901d-55d4abb1d976","owner":[],"postedDate":"January 2nd, 2024","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":27574750,"name":"Wildlife Biology"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2024-01-02T17:17:25+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2024-01-02 17:17:25","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-3776626","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-3776626","identity":"rs-3776626","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"qtupq5eGEP_6zYnWcrvyt","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}