Wildlife surveillance technology was harassing, spying on women in India

Camera traps, drones and other technologies to monitor wild animals such as tigers and elephants are being used to intimidate, harass and even spy on women in India, researchers said on Friday.

In one shocking example, a photo of an autistic woman relaxing in the forest was shared by local men on social media, prompting villagers to destroy nearby camera traps.

Trishant Simlai, a researcher at Cambridge University in the UK, spent 14 months interviewing about 270 people living near the Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India.

For women living in villages near the reserve, the forest has long been a place of “freedom and self-expression” away from men in a “polite and patriarchal society,” Simlai told AFP.

Women sing, talk about bad things like sex, and sometimes drink and smoke while carrying wood and grass in the forest.

But the introduction of camera traps, drones and audio recorders as part of efforts to monitor and protect tigers and other wildlife has widened the “male gaze of society in the forest,” it said. Simlai.

In many cases, drones were deliberately flown over women’s heads, forcing them to drop their firewood and run for cover, according to a study led by Simlai in the journal Environment and Planning.

– ‘We are afraid’ –

“We can’t walk in front of the cameras or sit in the place with our Kurtis (clothes) above our knees, for fear that we might be photographed or recorded in the wrong way. ,” a local woman was quoted as saying in the study.

A forest ranger told investigators that when a camera trap captured a photo of a couple having “love” in the forest, “we immediately reported it to the police”.

In perhaps the most shocking example, a photo of an autistic woman from a disadvantaged group fending for herself in the woods was inadvertently caught on camera in 2017.

The boys, who were designated as part-time forest workers, shared the photo on WhatsApp and Facebook groups to “shame the woman,” Simlai said.

“We broke and burned every camera trap we could find after the daughter of our village was humiliated in such a cruel way,” one local said. he told investigators.

In order to avoid the cameras, some women have started to wander away from the forest, which has the largest number of leopards in the world.

Women also sing less than they used to sing, which was used to prevent animal attacks.

Another local woman – who spoke of fear of cameras forcing her into “unusual places” in 2019 – was killed by a tiger earlier this year, Simlai said.

– ‘New ways to abuse women’ –

One woman took advantage of the constant surveillance.

“Every time her husband beat her, she would run in front of the camera so that her husband would not follow her,” Simlai said.

Overall, “these technologies are really great” and are revolutionizing conservation efforts, Simlai emphasized.

But he called for more discussions with local communities about the technology, as well as transparency and oversight from forest officials, and careful training for local workers.

“A lot can be done by the conservation organizations that — for the first time — introduced this technology to the government,” Sim added.

Rosaleen Duffy, a conservationist at the University of Sheffield in the UK, told AFP she was “sadly” not surprised by the research.

“What amazes me is the conservationists who think that technology can be developed and used outside of society, politics and economics,” he said.

“The cases in this study did not happen by accident,” Duffy pointed out. “They were actively using drones to provide new ways to continue to abuse women.”

While this technology can be a powerful tool for wildlife conservation, “there must be clear rules of what they can and cannot be used for, and clear consequences for anyone who they misuse them,” he added.

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