Aisha and the leopards in Sri Lanka
- Ximena Neri
- Mar 26, 2019
- 9 min read
Her approach to life is elegant and brave: Actions > words! Living in four contrasting countries definitely gave Aisha a special insight on the different issues faced by local communities and wildlife. Her life-experiences led her to an early but outstanding career in human wildlife conflict. In this blog, she shares with us part of her integral research on Sri Lankan communities and leopards, her experiences as a woman in the field and more!
A woman of many cultures: Sri Lankan, who lived in Hong Kong, Bermuda and Canada, is ready to give back a lot to the world. With an undergraduate degree by the UBC studying Environment & Sustainability, specializing in Biogeosciences, and taking 2 years off to work for WWF-Canada and a couple Sri Lankan eco-tourism and environmental research organizations, she is now leading her own research in Wildlife Conservation, focusing on leopard-livestock ‘conflict’ .
To Aisha it is important that we feel personally connected to our forests, our oceans and our wildlife in order to work towards conserving them, and such a change in behaviour starts with knowledge, awareness and interest.
We can’t only focus on trying to change animal behaviour through fencing, movement barriers, mitigation techniques, but we also have to work with the human communities at the forefront of these issues in order to see potential ways where small behavioural changes can have a big impact.
Q & A with Aisha
Q: How did you start studying Human-Wildlife Conflicts and why is it a topic of interest to you?
A: I’ve always loved animals (Lion King has been my favourite movie since it was released, and I watch it on average once a month!). The fact that I moved around during my adolescence and lived in four contrasting countries also opened my eyes to different issues faced by local communities, varying opinions and priorities, and the different wildlife and habitats around. I realised that human-wildlife ‘conflict’ (I say ‘conflict’ because sometimes it’s dangerous to attribute the world conflict to a scenario may be easily aggravated/worsened) is incredibly complex, and needs to address both the humans and the wildlife involved – that’s logical, right? We can’t only focus on trying to change animal behaviour through fencing, movement barriers, mitigation techniques, but we also have to work with the human communities at the forefront of these issues in order to see potential ways where small behavioural changes can have a big impact. We can’t remove humans from this phenomenon, as often these conflicts result in retaliatory or preventative measures being taken against carnivores by humans, resulting in their death. But we have to understand why – what are the economic losses faced by this conflict, what’s the level of tolerance people have in terms of losing their livestock to carnivores, what sorts of mitigations have been tried and what sorts of mitigations are people willing to try in a different way?
We can’t prioritise humans over wildlife, or vice versa, but instead need to approach these problems in a more interdisciplinary way and create coexistence strategies with the communities themselves who are most affected. I’ve always been drawn to small-scale community-based wildlife conservation, and once I started engaging more in the literature I realised there is a need to increase these kinds of projects. After all, if the communities involved don’t support conservation, or aren’t willing to trial new mitigations, then long-term conservation simply won’t be feasible. Likewise, people may have already tried things and have a lot of lessons we can learn from! So from stage one, I think it’s crucial to engage and work alongside those affected, instead of doing it retroactively.
Q: Which would you say are the greatest challenges to achieve human-carnivore coexistence in your area of study?
A: This is something that I will hopefully understand more once I finish my analysis and writing J As of now, I would say that the greatest challenge to human-carnivore coexistence is simply figuring out how to balance between economic development and poverty alleviation with conservation of leopards and their wide habitat ranges. We cannot ignore the fact that Sri Lanka is a developing country, went through a 26-year civil war and is trying to be more competitive in its domestic and international markets. With a population of over 21 million in an area of around 65,00km2, you can see how this may lead to some problems, as communities naturally try to improve their quality of life.
I think education is a crucial tool we have to use more effectively to achieve coexistence. Though the standard of education and literacy rates are very high in Sri Lanka, conservation in general isn’t something that is taught at a young age – only those that choose to pursue biology/ecology/zoology as a career path later in life will be exposed to relevant concepts. I remember my grade 1 and grade 2 classes in Vancouver, Canada teaching us about the “3 R’s” (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and taking us on field trips to actual salmon hatcheries, and teaching us how important it is to maintain stream health and reduce pollution levels – that’s the sort of stuff that kids love, and it sticks with them. Being exposed to issues of wildlife loss, forest degradation, climate change as a child will definitely create more conscious adults that are more willing to adapt their behaviours to lead a more low-impact lifestyle, versus trying to tell adults to change their behaviours after decades of a pattern. Long-term change has to come willingly, and for that I believe the greatest challenge is to incorporate these teachings into education programs across the world – Sri Lanka included.
Q: So far, which would you say are the most interesting findings of your work in the social dimension of leopard-human conflict?
A: Analysis of the surveys are currently underway, but there are already some interesting results. In the Yala buffer zone, one of my study sites, 80% of farmers reported that leopards are the biggest issue they face raising cattle in this landscape (either through direct depredation attacks, or the costs involved in trying to prevent attacks from occurring). However, 84% of farmers were genuinely interested and concerned about leopard conservation.
To me, this is a promising result – communities who seem to be affected, in general, quite negatively by leopards still show interest in their conservation. This is a great example of where coexistence can be possible, if we dig a bit deeper and get a better sense of what is determining people’s attitudes towards leopards, and how willing farmers are to try alternative forms of cattle husbandry or install different mitigations. This is also an example of perhaps a counter-intuitive result that can arise from conducting surveys, and illustrates the importance of assessing the social dimension of this issue at a small scale, as each community might display different patterns.
Q: What challenges have you faced as a woman working in human-wildlife conflict research?
A: I have to start by saying that I’m incredibly lucky to be working in such a supportive (and female-dominated!) lab at UBC, and that any issues I have faced personally are more part of the exception than the norm. The majority of people I’ve worked with have been nothing but kind and supportive – most of the cattle farmers themselves were friendly, and some even offered to help me check my cameras as the risk of theft was very high! So these challenges I’m talking about below represent a small fraction of my overall experience, but are important things to consider nonetheless.
I’ve found a main challenge to be balancing assertiveness with perceived aggression. Women have strong viewpoints just as much as men, however we’re sometimes viewed differently when we express them. I’m not sure if this is because it goes against (very) old-fashioned views that women should be soft, compliant and demure, or if it’s just not common enough practice yet that it still turns heads. But to this day, regardless of the country or context, I find that when women have something important to say, they always have to justify it more than men have to. We have to self-promote more, we have to validate ourselves more, we have to be more calm and collected.
The challenges I’ve faced differ depending on the context – in Western North America, I find that the challenges are more subtle. I was recently at a conference where it was very evident that males dominated the senior positions in wildlife-related academia. Some men even self-proclaimed being part of the “Old Boys Club”, in humour, but I was a bit alarmed because it seemed to be dismissive of the fact that it’s been easier to get to that stage for them, as men, as it would have been for women. Men shouldn’t have to be ashamed or feel guilty that they are successful…instead, create equal opportunities and engage with more women in the field, because they may offer a different point of view! We are never done learning, no matter how accomplished or old we may be. That being said, I had some wonderful conversations and interactions with both male and female researchers, especially younger graduate students, so the trend seems to be changing!
In Sri Lanka, challenges can be more overt: from being cat-called while doing fieldwork, questioned on whether or not I was strong enough to be able to walk around in the excruciating heat, and in general being ignored when I was coordinating plans with men (there are exceptions, of course). For my work, I relied a lot on the support of others (government officials, safari guides, naturalists, jeep drivers), however at times I found myself helpless when I had to plan our days, as my messages and calls would go unanswered 90% of the time to certain people. I recall one time I tried to call someone, and his phone rang about 8-9 times before it went to the voicemail. My (male) research assistant called the same person right after, and he picked up immediately. Doesn’t feel great, especially when I am the one leading the project.
I’ve been asked by men “What are you going to do in 10 years, when you have children? You can’t do this forever.” I always laugh – how am I supposed to answer this?! Maybe I don’t plan on having children. But, if I do, I should hope that we are shifting towards a society where both parents invest their time into their children, and not just the mother. It’s especially disappointing as Sri Lanka seems to fondly remember how they had the first elected female head of government in the world. We should be proud of that, and help facilitate women into the career paths they choose. This is what I mean, actions > words.
I remember once I was checking a camera, which was set on a bund between a lake and the adjacent dry forest. As I approached the camera, an ENORMOUS crocodile leapt over the bund and dashed into the water…I reacted with fright (we were only about 3m away from this!) and I guess I was visibly shaken afterwards. Out of all the wildlife we’d encountered in the field, I would hazard a guess to say that crocodiles are the most dangerous (and unpredictable). What threw me off was how I was looked at afterwards, as if I was delicate and couldn’t handle this work…I’m pretty sure any man who wasn’t used to the area and hasn’t had many crocodile encounters would have reacted the same way!! But the difference is, they wouldn’t have been looked at with sympathy and hesitation, and their ability to conduct work wouldn’t be in doubt, despite displaying a very natural sense of fear after encountering a gigantic crocodile.
Q: Do you have any thoughts on how climate change will affect our relations with carnivores?
A: That’s a hard one – some carnivores are more adaptable to a range of climates and habitats and have broad diets, so will likely be more impervious to climate change. Some others, particularly some large and charismatic carnivores like polar bears and tigers who have lost so much of their habitats already, or cheetahs, who have low genetic diversity, may be increasingly at risk of extinction. Unfortunately, I think the general public tends to pay attention once large, charismatic species start to decline and go extinct, and no so much when this happens to the often overlooked (but also crucial!) amphibians, reptiles, arthropods, etc. This might(?) mean more funding, awareness and attention being paid to certain carnivore species in the face of climate change, however I can’t help but wonder how much further that attention and money could go if we, as the public, focused more on prevention of the problem versus trying to race against time to treat it!
It’s really important to appreciate how interconnected everything is, and how climate change is causing these feedback loops – ultimately, we cannot properly conserve the wildlife around us without changing our fundamental behaviours and demand for products that are driving resource extraction, forest degradation, land conversion, ocean pollution etc. that are plaguing the world currently.
Aisha is a really amazing scientist, that easily integrates interdisciplinarity in her research, With novel and interesting approaches to human-wildlife interactions, focused on leopards, she is certainly giving a lot to human-wildlife interactiosns science. I am really looking forward to see her finished thesis!
Thank you so much for being our guest!
Follow Aisha on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aisha_uduman and in her blog to find more about her whereabouts https://aishauduman.wordpress.com/
-XimNeri
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