When we think of war, we usually think only of human casualties.\u00a0 From 1950 to 2000, 80% of worldwide conflicts have happened over a biodiversity hotspot.\u00a0 What does this mean for the animals and plants that live there?<\/p>\n
Manas National Park (MNP) lies within the eastern Himalayan hotspot and is home to many endangered, endemic animals.\u00a0 It is also a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site and is contiguous with Royal Manas National Park (RMNP) in Bhutan.\u00a0 This national park and the land surrounding it was home to an ethnopolitical conflict from 1980 to 2003.\u00a0 During this period of hostility, the already vulnerable Indian Rhinoceros was completely poached out of MNP, leading to a program to repopulate the park of rhinos.\u00a0 Evidence points to other animals also being severely impacted by this conflict.\u00a0 Knowing how animal populations are affected by conflict can help us find out how to help them.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t much data on mammal distribution from before the conflict.\u00a0 So, three forests were chosen within MNP to find differences between the rates of capture of different mammals.\u00a0 These forests were Bansbari and Bhuyanpara, which have not faced conflict since 2003, and Panbari, which had experienced conflict until 2016.<\/p>\n
Camera traps were set up for the duration of the winter of 2016\u20142017.\u00a0 The cameras were operational for all 24 hours for around 52 days.<\/p>\n
\u25ba Twenty-five different mammal species, with 13 of them threatened, were found.<\/p>\n
\u25ba The cameras did not capture many species of rodents or mammals that live in trees or in the air.\u00a0 Almost all mammals that were supposed to be in the area, however, were captured.<\/p>\n
\u25ba Ethnopolitical conflict does play a significant role in animal\u00a0conservation \u2014 it was found that there were more prey species in the non-conflict area, which could be because militants in the area were eating them.\u00a0 A higher concentration of predators was found in the conflict zone.\u00a0 During the conflict, these animals might have taken refuge in the neighbouring RMNP and come back to MNP once it was conflict-free.<\/p>\n
\u25ba This study has confirmed that human conflict will significantly change not only our lives but also those of the wildlife surrounding us.\u00a0 The next question is how it affects predators and prey alike, and whether peacetime conservation efforts are truly making an effect.<\/p>\n