Yves here. This post, while it offers many important observations from the frontlines of the efforts to protect endangered species, oddly skips over the big issue of habitat loss due to seemingly unending demands by humans for more calories or income, as in more farmland or more hunting (or more poaching so as to sell animal parts for vastly more than their value as food). So viable coexistence given that would mean retreat of humans, an option I have yet to see discussed seriously.
Consider in the US: many of you have seen the famous video of how the reintroduction of wolves at Yellowstone led to great changes in its ecosystem, including the paths of rivers and streams. But wolves have large hunting ranges. They can’t be “reintroduced” much in the absence of that. A particular change visible even in suburban America is the corresponding increase in the coyote population, which wolves eat. The rise in number of coyotes has thinned out foxes, which coyotes prey upon, save (less successfully) the tree-climbing gray fox.
By Ashraf Shaikh, a wildlife biologist and conservation researcher based in India. His work focuses on human-wildlife interactions in the Central Indian landscape, with an emphasis on conflict resolution, community engagement, and the socio-ecological dynamics of shared spaces. Originally published at Undark
In the late 20th century, the term conflict dominated both conservation narratives and scientific literature concerning human-wildlife interactions. Stories of elephants trampling fields, leopards predating on livestock, and tigers attacking people appeared frequently in Indian media coverage and scientific reports alike. These encounters were framed in stark oppositional terms: wildlife as dangerous intruders, humans as helpless victims or, sometimes, hostile invaders. Policies followed suit, driven by fear, protectionism, and removal.
By the early 2000s, a quieter revolution in language began. Conservationists, scholars, and practitioners began to increasingly look at human-wildlife interactions through a gentler, more hopeful framework: coexistence. It challenged the tired binary of conflict vs. harmony and embraced the complexity of shared spaces. The idea was to move beyond simplistic victim-perpetrator models, and instead focus on the ways humans and wild animals learn to live with each other, through adaptation, tolerance, and negotiation.
At its best, coexistence offered a radically compassionate lens. It highlighted mutual resilience, the emotional and cultural bonds people form with wildlife, and the rich knowledge systems that inform positive interactions. It asked us to imagine a world not governed by fortresses and fear but by mutual accommodation.
But as the term gained popularity, its elasticity became its undoing. Coexistence seems to have morphed into a kind of all-purpose justification, deployed by governments to delay action, by researchers to sanitize fieldwork, and by nongovernmental organizations to maintain reputational capital. Its misuse now functions less as an ethical compass and more as a rhetorical shield. The consequences are becoming painfully clear: Human suffering is dismissed as culturally acceptable, wildlife is criminalized and mishandled, and systems that should protect both are allowed to stagnate.
Take Chandrapur, a district in eastern Maharashtra I’ve worked in over the past couple of years as a wildlife biologist and conservation researcher. Nestled between tiger reserves and fragmented forests, Chandrapur is one of India’s most densely populated tiger landscapes outside of formally protected zones. Here, tiger attacks are not rare events; they’re disturbingly routine.
Between 2013 and 2023, some 300 people were attacked by tigers in the district, with close to 150 fatalities, according to forest department records. According to my research, most of these attacks occur not inside forests; they are sudden maulings in agricultural fields or early morning ambushes when people go out to defecate. Often, the victims are elderly men, doing everyday chores that require venturing into the periphery of forested areas or tending to their fields.
Our team has repeatedly flagged the need for responsive systems: adaptive risk communication, strategic fencing, decentralized early-warning mechanisms, and emergency response teams. But what we encounter more often than policy is placation. At meetings and informal discussions with forest officials and local researchers, a single phrase recurs like a lullaby: “People here are used to it.”
That phrase, seemingly benign, is chilling. It represents weaponized tolerance, a way to reframe tragedy as resilience, to turn recurring trauma into a cultural norm. It absolves the state of responsibility and silences the voices of those living in fear. It reduces death to data, and grief to a shrug.
Yet coexistence here is not just failing people. It’s failing tigers too. Big cats implicated in fatal encounters are often tranquilized and held in captivity for life. Others are relocated to forests they’ve never known, where they either wander confused or return to human settlements. Some are killed. Ironically, the very framework meant to protect tigers becomes the excuse for mishandling them.
In Chandrapur, coexistence has stopped being a shared ethic. It has become a mirage, suggesting harmony where there is imbalance, implying choice where there is compulsion.
Travel eastward, and the story deepens in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, straddling India and Bangladesh. Here, water, forest, and predator form an intricate web of life. Tigers swim through channels. Humans venture into forests for fishing, honey, and firewood. The danger is omnipresent, and yet, so is devotion.
The region’s cultural narrative is anchored in the worship of Bonbibi, a local forest goddess revered for offering protection from tigers. Before entering the forest, honey collectors and fishers pray at her shrines, offering flowers, chants, and whispered hopes. This spiritual framework fosters a kind of psychological resilience that helps people navigate risk.
But it has also been conveniently co-opted by the state and conservation organizations. Officials and NGOs often refer to the community’s cultural bond with tigers as a reason to explain away inadequate infrastructure, poor compensation for those affected, and lack of preventative measures. When someone dies in a tiger attack, particularly if their forest entry was deemed unauthorized, their family may receive no support.
The loss is not just emotional. Widows of victims are often stigmatized as swami khejos, literally “husband eaters” in Bengali, and face social exclusion. Many are pushed further into economic precarity, unable to find work or remarry.
Again, wildlife fares no better. Problem tigers are rarely addressed through proactive measures. They’re tracked only after multiple incidents, and often face either botched relocations or lethal control. Coexistence here becomes a mask, used to justify state apathy, erase community suffering, and treat cultural endurance as a substitute for institutional support.
The Sundarbans are home not only to tigers with unique traits, but also to some of the most marginalized, climate-vulnerable communities in South Asia. Reverence is not relief. Culture is not compensation.
This narrative distortion isn’t unique to South Asia. In Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, a strikingly similar dynamic has unfolded, this time involving elephants.
Hwange is home to an estimated 45,000 elephants, about triple the area’s ecological capacity. Droughts and scarce resources are pushing herds out of the park and into nearby villages, where they trample fields, destroy homes, and sometimes injure or kill residents.
In response, authorities and NGOs have turned to technology. Last year, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, in partnership with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, rolled out EarthRanger — a GPS tracking system that sends real-time alerts when collared elephants approach human settlements. Local “community guardians” receive early warnings and post them on WhatsApp groups or deliver them to households via bicycle messengers — a promising but limited-scale intervention.
Yet only 16 elephants have been collared, a tiny fraction that limits the system’s reach. Beyond this tech, villagers continue to rely on rattles, chili fences (pieces of string infused with chili oil), and watchtowers. Meanwhile, compensation remains weak or inconsistent; funeral support is typically meager, and human fatalities continue with minimal redress.
Nevertheless, coexistence remains prominent in conservation messaging. Workshops still preach patience, and NGOs promote tolerance, even when farmland is lost and communities receive scant support. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2025 alone, 158 animals involved in conflicts were culled following 18 human deaths.
In Hwange, as in Chandrapur and the Sundarbans, coexistence has too often become a slogan, not a strategy, a comforting distraction that allows institutions to showcase moral intention while sidestepping material responsibility to humans or wildlife.
When interventions are delayed in the name of tolerance, wildlife begins to adapt in problematic ways. Predators grow bolder, losing their fear of human spaces. Ungulates raid crops, developing habits that put them at risk of retribution. Over time, these behaviors increase both the frequency and severity of conflict.
One common response is translocation, removing animals from high-conflict zones and placing them in safer areas. But this often fails. Leopards released into forests far from their capture sites frequently return or die. Elephants moved in Sri Lanka and northeast India have starved, been attacked, or failed to integrate into existing herds.
These failures reveal a painful truth: Wildlife is not just part of the landscape; it is part of a narrative ecosystem, shaped and sometimes scarred by human decisions. Animals are not passive icons of nature. They are sentient participants, whose lives are altered by every policy misstep and every delayed intervention.
It’s tempting to discard coexistence as another failed ideal. But doing so would be a mistake. The problem is not with the concept but with its instrumentalization. A more grounded and ethical form of coexistence is still possible. But it must be reclaimed, not romanticized.
A just model of coexistence must recognize and define thresholds of acceptable risk, for people and wildlife. It must acknowledge that tolerance is not innate but rather built through trust, fairness, and dialogue. It should ensure rapid, fair compensation and mental health support after conflict incidents. Finally, it must accept that in some landscapes, coexistence may require serious ecological or social restructuring, and treat coexistence not as a badge of cultural resilience, but as a shared, negotiated, and constantly evolving pact.
Communities don’t need poetry. They need policy. Wildlife doesn’t need abstraction. It needs security.
If conservation is to retain its ethical integrity, we must stop using coexistence as a moral curtain to hide behind. True coexistence is not a slogan to print on posters or a checkbox for funding proposals. It is a living, breathing, uncomfortable negotiation that demands humility, responsiveness, and shared responsibility. It means engaging with complexity, not avoiding it. It means acknowledging that sometimes, people are tired of being tolerant. And that sometimes, even wild animals pay the ultimate price for our institutional indifference.
Coexistence can still be a powerful ideal, but only if we stop using it to mask harm and start using it to repair trust. It’s time we stop hiding behind words, and start showing up with action.
