Chapter 19 Human-Wildlife Conflict: A Case study of Manas National Park, Assam Subarna Moni Pradhan and Sanghamitra Choudhury Introduction Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) is a global issue which needs an inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to understand its cause and effect, maladies and prevention. It deals with conflicts human beings and wild animals. The phenomenon of human- wildlife conflict arises when the requirements and behaviours of wildlife exert adverse effects on human objectives, or conversely, when human pursuits detri- mentally influence the essential requirements of wildlife (Sillero et al., 2001; Madden, 2004; Mekonen, 2020). HWC, according to the IUCN Task Force, occurs when an animal directly and repeatedly endangers people’s lives or their safety, which results in the persecution of that species. Conflict about the best course of action to address the situation frequently results from retaliation against the species that is being accused. The term “human-wildlife conflict” can also refer to conflict that arises between people and wildlife, acts taken by either that negatively impacts the other, or the belief that wildlife poses a threat to property, health, or human safety. It can also refer to threats that wildlife poses to human life, economic security, or recreational activities. Underlying tensions from human-to-human conflicts over resource usage and conservation exacerbate human-wildlife conflict. Wild animals require large habitats for the (their) sustenance which is found to be overlapping with human settlements and agriculture lands near Protected Areas. The expansion of human population, conversion of land area, land-use patterns, encroachment on S. Moni Pradhan (B) Sikkim University, Department of Peace and Conflict Studies and Management, 6th Mile, Samdur, Tadong, Gangtok 737101, Sikkim, India e-mail: shuvowashburn@gmail.com S. Choudhury Department of Political Science, Bodoland University, Ambedkar Social Science Building, Rangalikhata Deborgaon Kokrajhar (BTAD), Assam 783370, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Chakrabarti et al. (eds.), Indigeneity, Development and Sustainability, Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1436-0_19 381