Research findings suggest that surveillance technologies initially set up to monitor wildlife and habitats for better conservation in Corbett National Park are being misused today in various ways to intimidate and even surveil local women. 

The study, by researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK, reveals that cameras and drones are being misused by forest rangers. Rather than using them to monitor animals, they have been used to intimidate women and deter them from accessing natural resources right to which they are legally entitled.

How are surveillance tools being misused?

For 14 months, through interviews with 270 residents around the Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand, the research unearths disturbing practices. The women reported that the drones were flown over them specifically to scare and restrict their movements.

“A photograph of a woman going to the toilet in the forest — captured on a camera trap supposedly for wildlife monitoring — was circulated on local Facebook and WhatsApp groups as a means of deliberate harassment,” said Trishant Simlai, the study's lead author and a researcher at the University of Cambridge.

Simlai says that the surveillance devices have changed the forest, once a refuge for women escaping domestic violence and societal pressures, into a space where they feel watched and vulnerable.

Impact on women's safety and mental health

Traditionally, women would collect firewood and sing in groups to prevent wild animals such as tigers and elephants from attacking them. However, the presence of camera traps has left them inhibited and quieter, thereby increasing the risk of dangerous wildlife encounters.

This shift in behavior has proven disastrous," Simlai stated. "One woman he interviewed has since been killed in a tiger attack," he shared. He added that constant surveillance has taken its toll on women's mental health.

These technologies are not just mere tools for conservation but seem to extend societal power dynamics into forested areas. "We argue that the use of digital technologies for forest governance, such as camera traps and drones, tends to transform these forests into masculinized spaces that extend the patriarchal gaze of society into the forest," the study authors wrote.

Co-author Chris Sandbrook, a professor of conservation and society at the University of Cambridge, stressed the broader implications of these findings. “These findings have caused quite a stir in the conservation community. It’s very common for projects to use these technologies to monitor wildlife, but this highlights the need to ensure they’re not causing unintended harm,” he said.

Ethical conservation practices needed

The authors call upon conservationists to understand the unintended impact of surveillance technologies. They noted the need to understand the lives of local women and how forests are an integral part of their everyday life and social function, especially in areas where their identity is intricately connected with those places.

In the advance of conservation, the protection of wildlife must be balanced against the rights and safety of the people who live there.