The study area is under Koshi Rural Municipality 2 (Paschim Kusaha Village) is located in the east of Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve (KTWR, 86°55'-87°05'E and 26°34'-26°45'N) and lies on the flood plain of the Sapta Koshi River in Saptari and Sunsari district of Eastern Nepal (Fig. 1). The reserve was established in 1976 AD primarily to protect wild water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis arna). It covers an area of 176 square kilometers as the core area and 173 square kilometers as the buffer zone. Realizing the site's importance, Koshi Tappu was designated as a wetland of international importance and added to the Ramsar list on 17^th Dec 1987 (IUCN, 1990). The reserve has a subtropical monsoon climate with four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Spring (February-April) has pleasant warm temperate and silt-laden solid wind. Summer (May) is intensely hot with minimal precipitation and a maximum temperature up to 40 ℃. Mudflats, reed beds, and freshwater marshes dominate most of the area of the reserve. Crop or livestock depredation by wildlife imposes substantial costs on local people and their livelihoods (Madhusudan, 2003; Karanth and Nepal, 2012). The major crops are paddy, wheat, maize, millet, sugarcane, mustard, potato, banana, and other seasonal fruits and vegetables in their fields. All households (HHs) have multiple livestock such as buffalo, cow, goats, chickens, pigs, ducks, and fish farming (Field Survey, 2020).

The preliminary field visit was conducted in the first week of January 2020 to gain knowledge of the site's socio-cultural and biophysical aspects and build trust with the local people to complement the other research process in a participatory manner. Another field visit was done in the last week of the same month for data collection. Different observations related to the socioeconomic environment such as population, sources of income, and level of education were made in various places like the respondent's home, farm, corridor forest, and surroundings. Adaptation measures practiced at the local level were extensively observed. HHs questionnaire was developed which contained the information about the socioeconomic detail of each household, i.e., family size, education, income, occupation, gender, and management practices performed by them, people-wildlife conflict, movement of wildlife in those areas, and perception of people towards wildlife conservation and the existing presence and absence of wildlife in that area. Before the survey, consent from each respondent was taken verbally, and we strictly followed the social norms and values while conducting the survey. A total of 47 respondents from the village were randomly chosen from 250 different households of the study area and discussed issues of HWC with the park staff for this study.

Data obtained from the questionnaire survey were schematically recorded in an excel spreadsheet using Excel 2010. The gathered data were represented systematically in the form of graphs, pie charts, and tables. The obtained data were also presented in percentages. The chi-square test was performed to see the relationship between education and perception of people on wildlife conservation.

A total of 47 respondents were interviewed, of which 63.83% (n=30) were female and (36.17% (n=17) were male. More than half of the respondents, 68.09% (n=32), were between the ages of 31 to 55, 19.14% (n=9) were of the age group 16 to 30, and the rest, 12.77% (n=6), were more than 55 years old. The majority of the respondents (78.72%, n=37) lived in the study area for more than 20 years, whereas the minority 4.25% (n=2) migrated between 10 to 20 years ago, and none of the respondents migrated before ten years. Among the respondents, 57.45% (n=27) were illiterate, 25.53% (n=12) had primary education, 10.64% (n=5) had secondary education and only 6.38% (n=3) had higher secondary education (Table 1).

The major income for the family was from agriculture i.e. 63.83% (n=30), followed by business 10.64% (n=5) and service 6.38% (n=3). Rest 19.15% (n=9) depended on remittance (income from foreign employment) placed in others category.

HWC has created pressure on the people of the Paschim Kusaha village. The crop damage in Koshi rural municipality and Baraha rural municipality adjacent to KTWR revealed the highest economic loss; 55% of the loss was in paddy crop (Oryza sativa), followed by wheat (Triticum aestivum) (18%) and maize (Zea mays) (15%) which has been reported in another similar study (Joshi et al., 2020). A study conducted in the Kavrepalanchowk District of Nepal showed the highest economic loss for maize (35.78%), followed by mustard and potato (Pudasaini, 2020) and in a study conducted at Chitwan National Park, rice accounted for the highest economic loss NRs. 1399800 (US$ 11917.25), followed by wheat and maize (Dhakal, 2020). This study showed crop-raiding as one of the most serious issues similar to other studies from Nepal (Shrestha, 2007; Karanthand Nepal, 2012; Neupane et al., 2018; Pokhrel and Aryal, 2020).

Humans and wild animals use/occupy the same area and use similar resources, the attacks and the conflicts between the two increase (Tshewang et al., 2021). The present study's findings show that wild elephants, wild water buffalo, and wild boar are the major crop raiders which are similar to other studies conducted in KTWR (Timsina and Ranjitkar, 2014). This study showed the rate of crop-raiding to be high during the night which is similar to the study in Chitwan National Parkand it might be due to the difficulty in wild animals' detection (Ghimire, 2019). But another study carried out in Sundarpur, Udaypur reported high crop-raiding in the afternoon (Pokhrel and Aryal, 2020). Crops were raided during the cropping and harvesting period similar to a study in Chitwan National Park which might be due to the abundance of nutritious and easily available crops (Ghimire, 2019) or insufficiency of food in the reserve (Limbu and Karki, 2003).

This study showed 22 deaths at KTWR between 2016 and 2020. Another study conducted in KTWR demonstrated that the community people experienced wildlife attacks every month, leading to increased conflict between the park and people (Timsina and Ranjitkar, 2014). Other studies conducted in different parts of Nepal also showed that people were killed or seriously injured every year by encounters with wild animals such as wild elephants, wild boars (Limbu and Karki, 2003; Acharya et al., 2016; Ghimire, 2019; Dhakal, 2020).

Compensation for wildlife-caused damage is a fundamental strategy to mitigate or minimize HWC as it increases the community's tolerance level (Ogra and Badola, 2008; Karanth and Nepal, 2012; Kusi et al., 2020; Pudasaini, 2020). Compensation is given based on relief guidelines approved by the Government of Nepal. The amount has been categorized as NRs. 10000 (US \$ 85.13) to victims of crop damage and NRs. 1000000 (US\$ 8513.54) to human loss. The compensation scheme is a major issue to the respondents due to the lengthy process and insufficient compensation amount which might be due to the lack of clarity in the government's rule to compensate the wildlife victims because of lack of provision for compensation to crop damage (Timsina and Ranjitkar, 2014).

The mitigation measures applied to chase wild animals were following with fire, hitting and throwing stones, shouting by using tools, regularly watching the wild animals from a high elevation (often called watchtowers) were the main coping activities adopted by the local people to chase the wild animals and electric/solar fence was the primarily used protective measures. The application of these techniques was to threaten the wild animals from entering the field. These methods have been applied in various parts of the country (Thapa, 2010; Neupane et al., 2013; Pudasaini, 2020). However, it is essential to examine these methods' effectiveness and introduce advanced, practical measures to cut down HWC (Pokharel and Aryal, 2020) in KTWR. In addition to these mitigation methods, reinformed cement concrete fencing was also used in KTWR to stop the crop raiders. According to different studies by Kioko et al. (2008) and Banikoi et al. (2017), using an electric fence can also be highly effective in alleviating the damage to crops and property, given that they are adequately monitored and maintained.

The attitudes of people towards wild animals were positive as well as negative. The people receiving benefits from the conservation initiatives are more likely to tolerate the wildlife damage and be positive towards conservation (Studsrod and Wegge, 1995). People might also tolerate or have a positive attitude towards wildlife due to religious beliefs for instance in Bardia and Shuklaphanta (Shrestha, 2007). People of Sundarpur were also in favor of elephant conservation because of their religious sentiments of elephants as Lord Ganesh (Pokhrel and Aryal, 2020). There are also examples from other parts of the country where people have a positive attitude towards wildlife conservation due to similar beliefs (Bhattarai and Fischer, 2014; Kusi et al., 2020).

HWC is the most challenging issue of KTWR, most of the techniques to reduce it was manual and human-based. Applying the techniques singly or in combination with others depends on the severity of the problem and the number of wild animals approaching the cropland and houses. There must be a solution-based collaboration between national parks, divisional forest offices, buffer zone communities, community forest management committees, and local communities (Pudasaini, 2020).