Geospatial analysis of alarmingly increasing human-wildlife conflicts in Jim Corbett National Park's Ramnagar buffer zone: Ecological and socioeconomic perspectives

Abstract

Ecologically, the Ramnagar urban buffer (RUB) zone of Jim Corbett National Park (JCNP) in District Nainital (India) is highly stressed due to unstable geodiversity (active tectonics, reshaping fluvial landforms), rich biodiversity (600 species of flora 640 species of fauna), dynamic climatic conditions (rising temperature 0.03 °C/year, decreasing precipitation 0.30 mm/year), drying water resources (drying perennial springs and river streams 3%/year and 4%/year respectively), rising extreme flood events (4%/year). Despite that uncontrolled anthropogenic activities such as rapid unplanned urban growth (with 3% annual growth rate) in natural landscape of wildlife habitats (forest, horticulture, shrubs and crop land), increasing human colonized landscape (with 1.25% annual growth rate), increasing population (with 0.75% annual growth rate), emerging tourism industries (with 16% annual growth rate), increasing poaching activities (with 4% annual growth rate) have been accumulating the fragility of the buffer zone habitat of wildlife. Geospatial analysis advocates that these adverse ecological and socioeconomic changes in this transitional buffer zone accelerate the human-wildlife conflicts with 6% (20 events) annual rate, subsequently the area under low to moderate conflicting zone (annually 1–8 human-wildlife conflicts/km2) has been converting into high conflicting zone (annually more than 8 human-wildlife conflicts/km2) with 1.37% (0.89 km2) annual rate.