Statistics released this week by India's Environment Ministry count a total 1,144 people killed between April 2014 and May of this year. A deadly conflict is underway between India's growing masses and its wildlife, confined to ever-shrinking forests and grasslands, with data showing that around one person has been killed every day for the past three years by roaming tigers or rampaging elephants. 3, 2007 file photo, Indian forest officials carry a full-grown common leopard, after tranquilizing it in Gauhati, India. Wildlife experts say these conflicts have increased as elephants increasingly find their usual corridors blocked by highways, railway tracks and factories. Of the 1,052 lives claimed by elephants in the last three years, many had simply been in the way when the pachyderms wandered out of jungles in search of vegetation and raided farmers' crops. But for some who are living on the edge of wildlife borders, this development can come at a high cost. The growth of human settlements is often seen as economic development. That population of 1.3 billion is still growing, and as it does it is increasingly encroaching into the country's traditional wild spaces and animal sanctuaries, where people compete with wildlife for food and other resources. "In India it is particularly acute because of the high human population." "Conflict is already one of the biggest conservation challenges," said Belinda Wright, founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, based in New Delhi. The ministry released only a partial count for 2016-17 of 259 killed by elephants up to February of this year, along with 27 killed by tigers through May. That includes 426 human deaths in fiscal 2014-15, and 446 killed the following year. Statistics released this week by India's Environment Ministry count a total of 1,144 people killed between April 2014 and May of this year.
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