Current Trends of Wildlife Research (with an overview of research in the past and lessons for future)

1. What they did

L. A. K. Singh, a former Senior Research Officer for the Government of Odisha’s Forest and Environment Department and former Officer-in-Charge of the Central Crocodile Breeding and Management Training Institute, looks back over 40 years of his own work on crocodiles, tigers and elephants in India. He draws on reports from the Government of India, the Wildlife Institute of India, the Government of Odisha and three conservation organisations (the World Wildlife Fund-India, the Wildlife Trust of India and the Bombay Natural History Society), and on published history of wildlife research in the United States. This is a short conference abstract, not a full paper.

2. What they found

• In the 1970s, wildlife research mainly meant tracking of signs and evidence and recording behaviour and natural history. Research has since gone far beyond this.
• Current trends are satellite radio-tracking, remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) applications, molecular studies for wildlife forensics, techniques for managing conflict between people and wildlife, and socio-economic studies to ease the burden on people living in and around sanctuaries.
• Reports are increasingly “studded” with an overdose of statistics that average wildlife students, grassroots managers, the public and the media cannot follow.
• Organised research for wildlife management in the United States began in 1862, about 60 years before Aldo Leopold’s “Game Management” (1933). The United States experienced a strong disconnect between researchers and managers, and India sometimes sees the same. In the United States, private range owners and industry shaped research; in India, research is often opportunistic data collected as a by-product of management.
• Researchers from universities, conservation organisations, or protected-area managers themselves often lack continuity, because other duties or postings interrupt their work. The author credits three long-serving in-house scientists in Odisha (himself, Dr S. K. Kar and Dr C. S. Kar, each with over 36 years of service) as central to the state’s flagship conservation programmes.

3. What they concluded

• Today’s wildlife researcher must combine biology, ecology, sociology, geology, architecture, computing, statistics and law, and above all understand what they are studying and for whom.
• Methods should protect wildlife, avoid invasive action, not inconvenience people in the landscape, and use equipment in ways that do not take away jobs or overshadow traditional knowledge and skill.
• Wildlife science is for field use, so reports should be simple and understandable by grassroots workers. Because career pressure pushes scientists towards high Impact Factor journals, the author suggests a version for the international scientific community and a simplified version for local staff who put the knowledge into practice.