Human-snake Conflict and Co-existence in Goa, India

Human-wildlife conflict is increasingly recognised as a major challenge in conservation policy and practice, but remains narrowly framed around visible encounters with large, charismatic species. In contrast, snakebite envenomation, despite causing over 100 times more human deaths annually in India than elephants and tigers combined, remains largely excluded from both conservation frameworks and human-wildlife conflict discourse. In India, as well as globally, snakebite remains of the most neglected challenges at the intersection of public health and biodiversity governance, even though India accounts for nearly half of the global burden of recorded deaths. Treated primarily as a medical emergency, snakebite sits at an uneasy intersection of health systems, ecological disruption, and ethical coexistence, rendering it both politically and institutionally invisible. While policy attention has grown in recent years, mitigation continues to focus narrowly on clinical treatment and species removal. Ecological, veterinary, and socio-cultural dimensions remain largely excluded, despite the need for a One Health approach that recognises snakebite as a conflict that also results in the deaths of both domestic animals and snakes, impacting animal welfare, rescue systems, and broader coexistence dynamics.

This thesis investigates the layered dynamics of human-snake encounters in Goa based on a mixed-methods study that combines five years of public health facility data, six years of rescue and climate records, and 68 in-depth interviews with stakeholders such as doctors, rescuers, veterinarians, community members, and government officials. Two seasonal frequency peaks, during and after the monsoon, merged consistently across human bites, domestic animal deaths, and snake rescues. Generalised Additive Models applied to multi-species rescue data revealed that while rainfall, humidity, and temperature shaped overall patterns of snake rescues, species-specific behaviours such as mating, nesting, and neonate dispersal drove distinct rescue peaks. When interpreted alongside detailed interviews with rescuers, these models showed a striking alignment between local ecological knowledge and modelled trends, demonstrating that retrospective rescue data, when ecologically contextualised, can inform species-sensitive mitigation planning. Goa's relatively low recorded level of human mortality was supported by relatively good decentralised antivenom access, ambulance response, and public trust in government services. However, long-term morbidity is undocumented, psychological trauma is unaddressed, and migrant and informal workers remain structurally excluded from outreach and emergency care. Also, veterinary snakebite is entirely absent from policy frameworks. Interviews revealed that pet and livestock deaths from snakebite are common and often deeply distressing, with owners frequently describing emotional trauma, economic loss, and frustration at the absence of veterinary care or institutional recognition. Unlike animal deaths caused by tigers or leopards, which trigger financial compensation and formal response, snake-related losses remain entirely outside the scope of human-wildlife conflict governance. This exclusion reinforces a systemic double standard in how conflict is recognised, whose suffering is acknowledged, and which species are seen as the state's responsibility. Snake rescues have played a central role in reducing retaliatory and precautionary killings, but now risk reinforcing dependency on removal and undermining coexistence. With no legal clarity, rescue practices remain uneven, some grounded in conservation ethics, others shaped by public pressure, lack of institutional support, or social media performance. This has led to inconsistent training, arbitrary translocations, and growing emotional fatigue among rescuers. These patterns reflect deeper tensions around legitimacy, institutional accountability, and the uneven burden placed on informal actors to mediate human-wildlife conflict in the absence of state systems.

This thesis is the first to empirically connect human, animal, and ecological dimensions of snakebite conflict in India, demonstrating why coexistence strategies must move beyond charismatic species and address the systemic realities of overlooked human-wildlife interactions. By combining ecological modelling, institutional analysis, and grounded qualitative insights, it reframes snakebite as a biodiversity conflict shaped by infrastructure, species behaviour, policy absence, and unequal access to care. The findings show that snakebite conflict results in a spectrum of preventable suffering, of people, livestock, pets, and even protected snakes, shaped by systemic neglect and governance gaps. In doing so, it contributes to a multi-layered framework for understanding how neglected forms of conflict impact both human and animal wellbeing, and why biodiversity governance must integrate coexistence, care systems, and community knowledge as core components of response. Finally, it challenges prevailing assumptions about which people, species, and systems are prioritised in conservation policy and calls for more inclusive, ecologically grounded approaches to managing biodiversity conflict in India and beyond.