Abstract
Conflicts between wildlife and agricultural producers are a dominant problem in Bhutan, with policy debates focusing increasingly on whether most of the conservation costs are borne directly by the small producers and rural poor through crop losses and labor time diverted to guarding crops and livestock. This chapter attempts to quantify the extent of wildlife damage to crops and to livestock in Bhutan. While several important studies document in detail wildlife damage to agriculture in and near protected areas in Bhutan, this chapter aims to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the extent of the problem around the country, presenting the results of a survey of 526 households and outlining the extent of wildlife damage to their crops during a 12-month period.
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Notes
- 1.
1 But the sample was limited: 990 urban households and 2,300 rural households. In descending order the reasons were: Lack of education facilities (46%), lack of employment or job search (17%), inadequate service facilities (15%), small holdings (7%), drudgery of farm work (5%), labor contributions (3%), and crop damage (3%).
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Roles of Agriculture Project for funding support. The authors are very grateful to Karma Kesang, Raghavan Sampath, and Ryan Slunaker for research assistance, survey support, and data analysis. We wish to dedicate this chapter to the late Karma Kesang who died in a tragic river accident while completing the survey. He and his wife collected the data throughout Bhutan.
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Ura, K., Stringer, R., Bulte, E. (2009). Managing Wildlife Damage to Agriculture in Bhutan: Conflicts, Costs and Compromise . In: Lipper, L., Sakuyama, T., Stringer, R., Zilberman, D. (eds) Payment for Environmental Services in Agricultural Landscapes. Natural Resource Management and Policy, vol 31. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72971-8_12
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