Wildlife monitoring tech used to harass, spy on women in India

PARIS, France — Camera traps, drones, and other technology for monitoring wildlife like tigers and elephants are being used to intimidate, harass, and even spy on women in India, researchers said Friday.

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

Trishant Simlai, a researcher at the UK’s Cambridge University, spent 14 months interviewing some 270 people who live near the Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India.

For women living in villages around the reserve, the forest has long been a space for “freedom and expression” away from the men in a “heavily conservative and patriarchal society,” Simlai told Agence France-Presse.

The women sing, talk about taboo subjects such as sex, and sometimes drink and smoke while collecting firewood and grass from the forest.

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But the introduction of camera traps, drones, and sound recorders as part of efforts to track and protect tigers and other wildlife has extended “the male gaze of the society into the forest,” Simlai said.

On multiple occasions, drones were deliberately flown over the heads of women, forcing them to drop their firewood and flee for cover, according to a study led by Simlai in the journal Environment and Planning.

‘We are afraid’

“We cannot walk in front of the cameras or sit in the area with our Kurtis (tunics) above our knees, we are afraid that we might get photographed or recorded in a wrong way,” a local woman was quoted in the study saying.

A forest ranger told the researchers that when a camera trap took a photo of a couple engaging in “romance” in the forest, “we immediately reported it to the police.”

In perhaps the most appalling example, a photo of an autistic woman from a marginalized caste relieving herself in the forest was inadvertently taken by a camera trap in 2017.

Young men appointed as temporary forest workers shared the photo on local Whatsapp and Facebook groups to “shame the woman,” Simlai said.

“We broke and set fire to every camera trap we could find after the daughter of our village was humiliated in such a brazen way,” one local told the researchers.

Aiming to avoid the cameras, some women have started roaming farther into the forest, which has the highest density of tigers in the world.

The women also sing less than they used to, which was used to deter animal attacks.

One local woman – who spoke about fear of cameras forcing her into “unfamiliar spaces” in 2019 – was killed by a tiger earlier this year, Simlai said.

Wildlife monitoring tech: ‘New ways to harass women’

Another woman took advantage of the constant surveillance.

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

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Overall, “these technologies are actually very good” and are revolutionizing conservation efforts, Simlai emphasized.

But he called for more consultation with local communities about the technology, as well as more transparency and oversight from forest authorities, and sensitive training for local workers.

“A lot of that can be done by conservation organizations that – in the first instance – introduced these technologies to the government,” Sim added.

Rosaleen Duffy, a conservation expert at Sheffield University in the UK, told Agence France-Presse that “sadly” she was not surprised by this research.

“What surprises me is conservationists who imagine that technologies can be introduced and used in a social, political, and economic vacuum,” she said.

“The cases in this research are not accidental,” Duffy pointed out. “They were actively using the drones to provide new ways of continuing to harass women.”

While this technology can be a powerful tool to conserve wildlife, “there must be clear rules for what they can and cannot be used for, and clear consequences for anyone misusing them,” she added.