Camera traps represent an incredible opportunity for naturalists. It allows you to watch natural environments without disturbing the fauna living in them. And they are increasingly being used to monitor natural parks and protected areas and monitor the progress of conservation programs. But like all surveillance tools, even naturalistic camera traps can pose dangers to privacy and become a tool of oppression and control in the “long arm” of patriarchy. That’s what’s happening in India, where a group of Cambridge researchers confirmed a long list of abuses by park rangers during use of women in communities living on the edge of Jim Corbett National Park, the country’s main natural park. camera traps and drones for natural monitoring.
Research
The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning F, is the result of work by Cambridge researcher Trishant Simlai, a sociologist who specializes in investigating the socio-political impacts of nature conservation programmes. And this is the result of 14 months of field research and over 270 interviews among locals living in villages overlooking Jim Corbet national park. As we said, this is India’s oldest and largest protected area, the headquarters of Project Tiger, a massive initiative to defend this species, funded largely by a massive global fundraiser supported by the WWF.
Simlai’s interest was to examine whether and how the equipment provided by the Tiger Project to monitor these animals interfered with the lives of the communities who used the reserve on a daily basis to gather resources such as food, water and timber. And their results revealed a much more serious situation than the researcher suspected.
women and forest
As Simlai’s research shows, women in communities living near Jim Corbett Park have a particularly close relationship with the forest. In fact, many come from highly patriarchal families, villages, and situations where alcoholism and domestic violence are prevalent. For this reason, the forest turns into a place to take shelter in the wild, under the pretext of collecting materials. Here they form deep bonds with other women, support each other, and take a breather before returning to their complicated family lives.
It is their closeness, this secret oasis of peace, that is endangered by the onslaught of camera traps. The devices in the hands of park rangers, who are often recruited from among the people living in the villages where women take shelter, become tools of control and harassment. In the worst cases, it involves actual stalking and intimidation. In less serious cases, deliberate intrusion into women’s private lives still drives them to change their behavior; for example, avoiding the choir songs they traditionally sing to keep wildlife away, thereby exposing themselves to risk. attacks. This is a very real danger, considering that one of the women Simlai interviewed during her investigation was killed by a wild tiger.
“No one could have imagined that the camera traps we placed in Indian forests to monitor mammals would have a profoundly negative impact on the mental health of local women who use these areas,” Simlai notes. “Surveillance technologies that are supposed to track animals can easily be used to control people, invade their privacy, and manipulate their behavior. The investigator adds: A photo of a woman defecating in the forest, taken by a camera supposedly intended for wildlife monitoring, was circulated on Facebook and WhatsApp groups in the area for some time and was used to deliberately harass the victim. ”
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
