Camera traps represent an incredible opportunity for naturalists. They allow you to monitor natural environments without disturbing the fauna that inhabits them. And increasingly, they are being used to keep an eye on natural parks and protected areas, and monitor the progress of conservation programs. Like all surveillance tools, however, even naturalistic camera traps can represent a danger to privacy, and become an instrument of repression and control in the “long arm” of patriarchy. This is what is happening in India, where a group of Cambridge researchers has confirmed a long list of abuses against women from communities living on the edge of the country’s main natural park, the Jim Corbett National Park, perpetrated by park rangers right through the use of camera traps and drones for naturalistic monitoring.
The research
The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning F, is the result of the work of Cambridge researcher Trishant Simlai, a sociologist specialized in the study of the socio-political implications of nature conservation programmes. And it is the result of 14 months of field research, and over 270 interviews carried out among the population who live in the villages overlooking the Jim Corbet national park. As we were saying, this is the oldest and largest protected area in India, the main headquarters of the Tiger Project, the great initiative for the defense of this species financed, in large part, by an enormous global fundraiser promoted by the WWF.
Simlai’s interest was to study whether, and in what way, the equipment provided by the Tiger Project for monitoring these animals interfered with the lives of the communities that exploit the reserve on a daily basis to collect resources such as food, water and timber. And his results revealed a much more serious situation than the researcher himself suspected.
Women and the forest
As demonstrated by Simlai’s research, the women of the communities living near Jim Corbett Park have a particularly close relationship with the forest. In fact, many come from extremely patriarchal families and villages, and from situations in which alcoholism and domestic violence are the order of the day. This is why the forest turns into a place to take refuge in the wild, with the excuse of gathering supplies. Here they form deep bonds with other women, support each other, and take a breather before returning to their complex family lives.
It is this intimacy of theirs, this oasis of secret peace that is compromised by the incursion of camera traps. Devices which in the hands of park rangers, often recruited from among the inhabitants of the villages from which women seek shelter, become instruments of control and harassment. In the worst cases, it involves actual stalking and intimidation. In the less serious cases, of an intentional intrusion into the private lives of women, which nevertheless pushes them to change their behavior, for example avoiding the choral songs that they traditionally sing to keep wildlife at bay, and thus exposing themselves to the risk of attacks. An all too real danger, given that during Simlai’s research one of the women he interviewed was then killed by a wild tiger.
“No one could have imagined that the camera traps we place in Indian forests to monitor mammals actually have a profoundly negative impact on the mental health of local women who use these spaces,” Simlai points out. “Surveillance technologies that are supposed to track animals can easily be used to control people, violating their privacy and altering their behavior. The photograph of a woman having a bowel movement in the forest – adds the researcher for example – taken by a camera supposedly dedicated to monitoring wildlife, circulated for some time on Facebook and Whatsapp groups in the area, and was used deliberately to harass the victim.”