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

NEW DELHI: 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 on Monday.

In one particularly egregious example, a photo of an autistic women 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 AFP.

The women sing, talk about taboo subjects such as sex, and sometimes drink and smoke 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 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 published in the journal Environment and Planning.

“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.