A Legal Framework for Artificial Intelligence in Wildlife Conservation in India - The Desideratum of the Decade

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Wildlife; Conservation; Artificial Intelligence; Statutory; Framework

Abstract

There has been an accelerating diversification of the Indian wildlife, precipitating a pressing demand for the introduction and formation of certain preservation strategies, not reactive but structurally anticipatory. The evolving paradigm of the utility of artificial intelligence has emerged as a rather transformative modality known for reshaping the contours of the law and policy of conservation. Being initially deployed for rudimentary monitoring, certain artificial technologies have transpired into rather sophisticated in terms of applications encompassing predictive analytics, behavioural mapping and ecological modelling, along with developmental catalysts by the increasing financial investments and the granular categorization of monitoring objectives across the subcontinent of Bharat. Contrarily, this form of technological proliferation exposes a critical lacuna in the Indian legal architecture, wherefore the absence of a dedicated statutory framework that is capable of regulating the deployment and the employment of artificial intelligence in wildlife conservation. The unregulated expansion of artificial intelligence in this domain has a risk of both overreaching as well as under protecting, underscoring the necessity of a statutory framework to ensure the boundaries of application of artificial intelligence in the process of wildlife conservation. This doctrinal study aims to contend as to the reasons for India ought to adopt a rather comprehensive legal framework to govern the utility of artificial intelligence within the broad trajectory of conservation law, The study would further interrogate the normative and imperatives of regulation, delineating the substantive and procedural dimensions that a prospective statute ought to encompass, which would include the safeguards against a form of algorithmic opacity, mechanisms for data governance, along with the provisions for the juxtaposing ecological imperatives, along with the technological innovations.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Muktha Bhat
AU  - Yogesh Madan Dharangutti
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/07
TI  - A Legal Framework for Artificial Intelligence in Wildlife Conservation in India - The Desideratum of the Decade
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Conceptualizing Legal Framework and Policies for Domestic Animal and Wildlife Conservation: Issues and Challenges in Hybrid Mode (ICAR 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 219
EP  - 228
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_18
ID  - Bhat2026
ER  -