Why does rabies still plague India in the 21st century?

In a rapidly changing world, responsive and scientifically sound surveillance systems are needed in order to better understand, and possibly predict outbreaks and spread of zoonotic infectious diseases. Unfortunately in India, most efforts towards strengthening response to zoonoses have mainly focused on improving technical and laboratory capacity. Surveillance and the collection of field data have either been neglected or at best patchily implemented

Wastelands of the Mind: The Identity Crisis of India’s Savanna Grasslands

The idea that wastelands are unproductive continues to be pervasive and is used by various agencies to gain control over marginal landscapes and remake them for productive purposes with dire results

Conservation Prioritization of Semi-Arid Savannas in India: A Multi-Scale Landscape Approach

The semi-arid savanna grasslands of peninsular India are unique habitats that support a vast proportion of Indiaís agropastoralist community. They are also home to critically endangered species such as the Great Indian bustard and other endangered and endemic species such as the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) and blackbuck antelope (Antilope cervicapra). Unfortunately, savanna grasslands have not received the attention of conservationists or policy makers, resulting in a lack of protection for both the endangered and endemic wildlife as well as the habitat. Given the high human-dependence on these biomes, traditional conservation measures such as large protected areas are not feasible. The management and conservation of these fragmented and human-dominated regions requires delineation of high-priority areas which are most likely to persist in the long-term

Intraguild interactions between native and domestic carnivores in central India

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 17, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Dr. Matthew E. Gompper.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2008.I determined various factors affecting the resource selection and spatial ecology of the Indian fox Vulpes bengalensis, a small canid endemic to the Indian subcontinent. I collected radiotelemetry data from 32 Indian foxes in the Great Indian Bustard Sanctuary, Maharashtra, India and assessed resource selection based on landcover characteristics. Indian foxes chose for grassland habitats at the scale of both landscape and home-range level and avoided human-dominated areas such as agricultural lands. Indian foxes also share the landscape with free-ranging dogs, which occur at higher densities than foxes due to human subsidies. Dogs can compete with carnivores either as exploitative, interference or apparent competitors. Dogs and foxes do not compete for similar food resources because dogs are mainly dependent on human-derived food whereas foxes mainly consumed wild caught food such as rodents, insects and fruit. However, dogs may act as a mid-sized carnivore on the landscape and thus there may be interference competition between dogs and foxes. I experimentally examined if the presence of dogs may deter foxes from accessing rich food sources. I found that when a caged dog was present at a food source, foxes reduced food consumption and increased vigilance behavior resulting in a foraging-vigilance tradeoff. The presence of dogs also negatively affected fox space use patterns at the landscape level indicating that because of the presence of dogs, foxes may avoid habitats such as agricultural fields and fallow lands that may hold higher prey densities. Dogs can occur at high densities in rural areas in India and extend the edge of anthropogenic disturbance, especially for small carnivores, beyond the borders of human settlements.Includes bibliographical references

Barking up the wrong tree: the agency in charge of controlling street dogs is completely ineffective

India has a serious free-ranging dog problem, and if animal welfare organisations are to be believed, it is only a matter of time before the street dog population is brought under control. But in truth, several of these organisations are haphazardly managed, their strategy to control the population of dogs and control the spread of rabies is devoid of science or logic, and some even misappropriate public funds. This has led to the current lose-lose situation for both people and animals

The street is no place for dogs: swinging wildly between wanton killing of dogs and extreme ‘pro-life’ interventions, India has never framed a rational, scientifically valid dog ownership or population control strategy

Everyday, India wakes up to horrific stories of attacks on people by street dogs and equally horrific acts of cruelty towards dogs. There is extreme polarisation on this issue between the advocates of human rights versus animal rights. The lack of a critical and scientific analysis is glaring

Do Dogs Threaten People’s Right to Safety in Public Spaces?

Many people are terrified of dogs. When a dog approaches them, they fly into panic and hysteria. They don’t know a dog’s body language and can’t tell the difference between a friendly canine from an agitated one. To them, all dogs are scary at all times. Their extreme reaction may be amusing to people who know canines. But this raises the question: Don’t people who fear dogs have a right to safety in public spaces

Not just subjective, but also sloppy – a response to Bhadra

We read Bhadra’s rejoinder1 to our letter2 with interest and disappointment. Not only has she failed to counter the main criticisms of our response to Majumder et al.3, she has made fairly serious allegations of scientific impropriety on our part. She has also alleged that we have inflated figures of dog bite cases in India by three orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, her conclusion is flawed and arises from a misreading and misunderstanding of both our original statement as well as the primary literature that was cited

Scale‐dependent strategies for coexistence of mesocarnivores in human‐dominated landscapes

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