Richard Collins: Living in harmony with nature is not so easy

The conflict between humans and wildlife is one of the greatest threats to species

Leopards still take livestock in India occasionally.

Bertrand Russell thought that religion helped fix the calendar and enabled ancient people to predict eclipses but otherwise, he quipped, it was of no benefit to mankind whatsoever.

The authors of a paper just published wouldn’t agree with the philosopher.
Ecologist Ramya Nair and colleagues in India say that traditional beliefs can encourage humans to share space and live in relative harmony with wild creatures.
‘We have to look beyond the ecological and socio-economic study of damages caused by human-wildlife conflict’, they say, and ’explore the cultural and societal context within which co-existence is embedded’.