The solar tech reducing human-wildlife conflict in India

For most people, watching a tiger in the wild seems like no more than a fascinating experience. But for Vijay Dhange, the big cats are lurking threats that remind him of his loss of kin. “Two of my own brothers were killed in tiger attacks during the last three years,” the 51-year-old recalls.

His home village, Sitarampeth, adjoins the Tadoba Andhari tiger reserve in central India, where according to the latest data, 120 to 130 tigers live in an area of about 242 square kilometres. Until a couple of years ago, it was common for nearby residents to encounter tigers, leopards, sloth bears, wild boars and other animals wandering in and around their villages, killing their livestock and attacking humans.

Crowded wildlife reserves and villages nearby offering sources of food: it’s a recipe for human-animal conflict, one that often ends badly for both parties. But a new solar-powered device has been helping villagers guard their homes and farms from wildlife without harming the animals or the environment.

Called Parabraksh, a Kannada word that means means “protection from wild animals,” it was developed by the Bengaluru-based engineering innovation organization Katidhan. Each unit costs 9,500 INR (about $156 CAD or £87). It runs on a six-watt solar panel connected to a lithium-ion battery and emits random flashes at night with its four LED lights. Depending on the landscape, these flashes are visible from 300 to 500 metres away, deterring animals from entering the targeted area. And the device is working. In Sitarampeth, for example, the non-profit Satpuda Foundation installed 32 units in April 2022. Since then, there have been no cattle kills. Once the device sends out flashes, the predators are also not seen wandering in their vicinity after dark.

Human-wildlife conflicts are on the rise globally due to human population expansion and its side effects: agriculture, infrastructure and other factors that degrade and fragment natural forests and wildlife habitats, bringing people face to face with animals.

Tigers, for example, have lost an estimated 95 percent of their historical range, according to the WWF, and of India’s more than 3,000 tigers, 730 have died in the past five years due to a range of causes including human conflict and territorial infighting. An adult male’s ideal range is 100 square kilometres or more, while a female can live in 10 to 20 square kilometres, preferably on land with safe spaces to raise cubs.

It’s a similar story with other species. From 2019 to 2023, India lost 1,381 Asian elephants due to a variety of unnatural causes, including electrocution and poisoning – actions taken to reduce crop raids and property loss. And according to a report by the non-profit Wildlife Protection Society of India, some 1,300 animals were killed by electrocution between 2010 and 2020, among them more than 500 elephants, 220 flamingos, 150 leopards and 46 tigers.

On the human side, a recent World Bank survey identified the top three impacts of human-wildlife conflict as crop damage, livestock depredation and the risk of direct encounters with wildlife resulting in injury or attack.

According to Indian government data, from 2019 to 2023 more than 3,562 people died as a result of elephant, tiger and other wild animal attacks across 18 of the country’s 28 states. Furthermore, a government report estimates that human-wildlife conflict causes economic losses worth millions of rupees every year to the communities living in villages on the forest fringes of India.

In the forested village of Sillari, about 200 metres from India’s Pench tiger reserve, traditional farmers like Dinesh Dilip Dhurve would suffer crop raids from blue bulls, wild boars, bison, sambar and deer until about a year ago.

“Herds of them stormed into my land at night, trampling upon my crops, devouring and destroying them,” says Dhurve, who grows paddy, pulses and seasonal vegetables on his six-acre farm. The annual loss was about 30 percent of his total production, amounting to an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 INR (roughly $500 to $650 CAD, or £275 to £360).

He and his family would stay up for nights together to guard their fields against wild animals, sitting on elevated sheds called machan, but their efforts were in vain – until the new Parabraksh devices appeared.

“Even the installation is easy,” says Dhurve, who has put up three units across his farmland. Depending on the height of the raiding wild animals such as wild boar, blue bull, sambar deer or bison, the device is perched on bamboo staffs of the required height and planted into the ground, he explains.

According to data from Katidhan, nearly 3,000 farmers living in and around 350 villages across 15 Indian states have benefitted from the device. Additionally, 45 buffer villages in the central Indian tiger reserves of Tadoba, Pench and Bandhavgarh have had 750 units installed during the past two to three years.

They are also used effectively in Assam, one of the worst-hit states by human-elephant conflicts. Earlier this year, 45 units were installed in villages bordering the Kaziranga National Park. Parabraksh also keeps pachyderms away from about a dozen coffee and banana plantations in the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Moreover, as many as eight state forest departments are using the technology to preempt human-animal conflicts.

“Based on scientific research, the technology works for the prowling animal by creating illusions of the presence of another animal in the area,” explains SR Ayan, lead engineer and founder of Katidhan. So this flashy, illusory animal, which appears to be moving in multiple directions in the installed area, boggles the wild animal’s vision and cognitive skills, scaring it away. Mandar Pingle, deputy director of the Satpuda Foundation, estimates that Parabraksh has reduced the number of cases of human-wildlife conflict by 92 to 95 percent in areas where it has been installed.

“These light deterrent devices are much better replacements than the erstwhile solar or barbed fencing used to keep away the wild animals from fields or villages,” says Pingle. Animals like tigers, leopards, wild boar, Indian bison, spotted deer and chital, among others, found here are free-ranging, and the presence of physical fencing in their path obstructs their movement.

Besides, when the solar power of the fences gets disrupted, the villagers often replace it with conventional grid power, which electrocutes the animals that come in contact with it. Barbed fences also injure animals. But Parabraksh does not harm or injure wildlife or hinder their movement.

For Ayan, who aims to reach out to 15,000 Indian farmers over the next year, it’s always a challenge to overpower the natural adaptation capacity of wild animals, who learn and evolve like humans. As a way forward, the organization is currently working on artificial intelligence–powered early warning systems to predict wild animal movement in an area in advance, he says. “We are continually improvising the product to stay at least a couple of steps ahead of them.”