Reducing the costs from human–wildlife conflict, mostly borne by marginal rural households, is a priority for conservation. We estimate the mean species-specific cost for households suffering damages from one of 15 major species of wildlife in India. Our data are from a survey of 5,196 households living near 11 wildlife reserves in India, and self-reported annual costs include crop and livestock losses and human casualties (injuries and death). By employing conservative estimates from the literature on the value of a statistical life (VSL), we find that costs from human casualties overwhelm crop and livestock damages for all species associated with fatalities. Farmers experiencing a negative interaction with an elephant over the last year incur damages on average that are 600 and 900 times those incurred by farmers with negative interactions with the next most costly herbivores: the pig and the nilgai. Similarly, farmers experiencing a negative interaction with a tiger over the last year incur damage that is on average 3 times that inflicted by a leopard and 100 times that from a wolf. These cost differences are largely driven by differences in the incidence of human death and casualties. Our estimate of costs fluctuates across reserves, mostly due to a variation of human casualties. Understanding the drivers of human casualties and reducing their incidence are crucial to reducing the costs from human–wildlife conflict. Most of the tales were about animals, for the Jungle was always at their door. The deer and the pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within sight of the village gates. “Tiger! Tiger!” (Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, Collins Classics, 2010) Significance Successful conservation of our dwindling wildlife involves a reduction in human costs—including human casualties, crops, livestock, and other property—from interactions with wild species. We analyze survey data from households incurring wildlife damage in India to illustrate that the cost from human casualties overwhelms all other property losses. Our results imply the following: 1) Considering the cost of human casualties while estimating costs from wildlife conflict is essential. 2) Compensation for damage incurred from interactions with wildlife in India is insufficient. And 3) conservation policies and organizations should refocus (if they are not already doing so) their efforts on reducing human death and injuries from interactions with wildlife.

India has seen remarkable growth in nature-based tourism. However, the current approach has had limited benefits to conservation, protected areas and local communities. With a surge in ecotourism initiatives, there has been a concurrent increase in associated conceptual and applied research. Based on the existing studies, quantitative and qualitative thematic analyses were conducted along with reviews of ecotourism research in India to: (1) classify broad themes under which various studies have been conducted; (2) categorize prominent reasons to adopt ecotourism; (3) evaluate whether principles of ecotourism have been incorporated in research; and (4) identify gaps in research. In general, research has exposed the negative impacts of mass tourism around protected areas, evaluated success stories and highlighted ecotourism potential. We found conservation of biodiversity and local socio-economic development to be the primary motivations for ecotourism. In addition, existing research is not comprehensive, nor does it equally address all the principles of ecotourism. We address these research gaps and provide recommendations that could help improve the existing discourse and encourage policy interventions. This can ensure socio-economic development of local communities through benefits sharing, without compromising conservation realities.

Large herbivores respond to seasonal changes in resource availability through habitat selection. Understanding variations in habitat choice is crucial for targeting conservation efforts, particularly for endangered, wide‐ranging species, such as the Asian elephant. We assessed patterns and determinants of elephant habitat use during the dry season, a period of resource limitation in tropical deciduous forests, in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, India. We collected detection/non‐detection data on elephant signs under an occupancy sampling framework, using spatially replicated surveys on foot along forest trails to estimate probabilities of habitat use by elephants. Each of our 97 sites (sampling units) was a grid cell of 11.75 km²area. Data were analysed using an occupancy model, which estimated detection probabilities for signs, while explicitly addressing the potential spatial dependence between sign detections on adjacent replicates. Using covariates that are likely to influence resource use, we made ecological predictions about dry season habitat use by elephants across the study area of 1850 km². The site‐level probabilities of habitat use by elephants ranged fromThe estimated replicate level detection probability wasWe found that distance to rivers was the best predictor of elephant habitat use, in dry season, demonstrating the overarching importance of riparian habitats in the landscape for the species. Artificial water holes established by wildlife managers do not appear to influence elephant habitat use, which is likely a result of abundant and near‐uniform distribution of such water holes across the study area. The sign survey‐based occupancy modelling approach provides a basis for reliable cost‐effective assessment of spatial distribution and habitat use by elephants and other large herbivores. Such assessments are essential for effective conservation management of large herbivores.

Human-wildlife interactions resulting in conflict remains a global conservation challenge, requiring innovative solutions to ensure the persistence of wildlife amidst people. Wild Seve was established in July 2015 as a conservation intervention program to assist people affected by conflict to file and monitor claims and receive ex-gratia payments from the Indian government. In 48 months of operation, Wild Seve filed and tracked 13,808 claims on behalf of those affected from 19 forest ranges around the Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks in Karnataka, India. This included 10,082 incidents of crop loss, 1,176 property damage incidents, and 1,720 incidents where crop and property loss occurred together. Wild Seve also filed claims for 782 livestock predation incidents, and assisted in 45 human injury incidents and three human fatalities. Elephant related losses comprised 93.9%, and big cat losses comprised 5.5% of reported cases. Wild Seve provides an immediate response to human-wildlife conflict incidents and improves access to ex-gratia payment schemes. Wild Seve is a low cost intervention that uses open-source technology and leverages existing policies to facilitate ex-gratia payments. The Wild Seve model of monitoring and addressing human-wildlife conflict is adaptable and scalable to high conflict regions globally, to the benefit of people and wildlife.

Globally, protected areas have long been the corner stone of biodiversity conservation efforts. In India’s Western Ghats, small and isolated protected areas are embedded in a matrix of multiple land-uses, most of which include agroforests. These agroforests are being increasingly recognized for their supplementary role in conserving wildlife. We examined bird species richness and densities in areca (Areca catechu), coffee (Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora) and rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) agroforests in the Western Ghats. We developed a priori hypotheses, predicting that bird species richness and guild density would be highest in coffee, followed by areca and rubber agroforests. We carried out 551 point-count surveys involving 386 hours of sampling in 187 agroforests across a 29,634 km2 area of the Ghats. We observed 204 bird species, of which 170 were residents. The average estimated richness per agroforest was higher in coffee (60.5) compared to rubber (45.4) and areca (34.1). We modeled species richness as a function of relevant biogeographic and environmental covariates. The most influential factors were tree cover, tree density and rainfall in all agroforests, but the strength of these effects varied. Coffee supported higher densities in all four habitat and three feeding guilds compared to areca and rubber. We integrated extensive field sampling with modeling that accounted for imperfect detection, while assessing bird richness and densities across multiple agroforest types. We establish that coffee agroforests are substantially richer in birds than rubber and areca, but all three agroforests play an important role in providing subsidiary habitats for birds in the Ghats. Policy decisions and markets must incorporate such biodiversity values and services provided by these agroforests to sustain and facilitate long-term biodiversity conservation.