How wildlife monitoring tech is used to harass women in India?

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 have said.

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" Simlai told AFP.

The women sing, and talk about taboo subjects while collecting firewood and grass from the forest.

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 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 published in the journal Environment and Planning.

'We are afraid'

"We cannot walk in front of the cameras or sit in the area. 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 in the forest, "we immediately reported it to the police".

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

'New ways to harass women'

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.

"A lot can be done by conservation organisations that in the first instance introduced these technologies to the government," Sim added.

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.