Between Forest and Farm: Human–Wildlife Conflict Governance and the Limits of Law in Kerala

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) can be considered one of the major governance challenges in many parts of India. Kerala, with its high population density, extensive forest cover along the Western Ghats, a very important biodiversity hotspot, and a long history of settled cultivation in hill areas, presents a small manifestation of this crisis. Elephants, wild boars, monkeys, leopards, and venomous snakes regularly tend to encroach upon agricultural lands and village boundaries, causing economic loss, injury, and death, while retaliatory killings threaten vulnerable species. This paper seeks to understand a systematic legal analysis of the framework governing HWC in Kerala by examining the foundational Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the landmark Wildlife (Protection) (Kerala Amendment) Act, 2025. It traces the evolution of judicial responses from the Supreme Court’s decisions in T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v Union of India to the ongoing Kerala High Court proceedings in Baiju Paul Mathews v State of Kerala and evaluates administrative interventions, including Kerala’s declaration of HWC as a state-specific disaster in 2024 and the revised compensation framework. The paper also identifies critical gaps in the existing regime: the absence of dedicated HWC legislation, unresolved tensions between forest rights and wildlife governance, inadequate accountability mechanisms for lethal action, and insufficient compensation. It concludes with recommendations for a national HWC statute, harmonisation of competing legal frameworks, and integration of the precautionary principle into conflict governance, arguing that effective legal response must address structural ecological drivers, not merely crisis symptoms.