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Over the last few years, conflicts have erupted in many of India's national parks and sanctuaries and other wildlife areas, between officials and NGOs involved with wildlife conservation on the one hand and local communities and social activists on the other. Legal protection to species and habitats including through PAs, has been a major and often successful focus of wildlife conservation. However this model has also been talked down and has ignored the dependence and rights of local communities on the resources of natural habitats, as also their tradition of conservation. This is one of the main causes of this conflict. Other factors include the increasing politicisation and commercialisation of rural areas, breakdown of traditions and demands made by the growing human and livestock population. Simultaneously, wildlife and wildlife habitats, and the resource base of countless rural and tribal communities, continue to be destroyed by the dominant industrial/commercial economy and the rampant consumerism of a rich minority. The same governments that declared protected areas, have today neither the will nor the means to protect these areas. On the contrary these very areas are being thrown open for activities like mining, dams, industries, tourism, roads and other so called 'development' projects. Though both wildlife and local communities have suffered because of such projects wildlife conservationists and wildlife activists have not been able to get together to fight them.

A series of consultations, local to national in scope, has been attempting to reduce the differences between positions taken by the conservationists and social optimists; in essence , to build bridges. In particular, the common interest of these groups to counteract the powerful industrial and commercial pressures mentioned above, has drawn them together. An attempt has been made to build on this common ground for greater understanding and joint action.