Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation
Species like elephants and venomous snakes often pay a heavy price for mismanagement of conflict situations. Mitigating this threat needs a pluralistic approach using science, activism, law and education. HEAL works in collaboration with other conservation groups to mitigate human-elephant conflict and issues related to snakes and snakebites in West Bengal.
One of HEAL’s major initiatives is the bringing an end to the large-scale killing of protected wildlife that happens every year, over several days, under the garb of tradition and culture. HEAL uses a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to enforce wildlife protection and make communities to give up hunting.
In wetlands of the lower Gangetic floodplains in West Bengal, where this elusive wild felid has to confront a host of challenges, HEAL strives to preserve its populations through habitat protection, community education, threat mitigation, and conservation surveillance.