Winner
Steve Winter
Freelance
"Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India"
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In Assam, an exploding population has converted nearly every scrap of land around Kaziranga National Park into a patchwork of villages, crop fields and tea plantations. As animals wander outside the invisible boundaries of the park, there is ever-increasing human-wildlife conflict, with growing injury and casualties on both sides. Tigers kill livestock; elephants and rhinos trample and devour crops, and elephants sometimes trample houses. All three of these species sometimes attack people. People periodically poison animals that stray into their communities or into tea plantations with agricultural pesticides. Also, pesticides from the many plantations in the area that produce much sought-after Assamese tea pollute waterways and ground water.
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