Communities dependent on natural resources for their sustenance and livelihoods can be vulnerable to threats such as invasive species. However, the presence of invasives can play varying roles in the lives of people, and get adopted in local use. These varying roles of invasives are important to assess, to understand the implications they may have on local livelihood and wellbeing. This study aims to explore the socio-economic impacts of Lantana camara invasion on the livelihoods and wellbeing of the forest-dependent Baiga community in Madhya Pradesh, India. I used a mixed method approach of remote sensing and qualitative methods such as oral histories, interviews, participant observation and household surveys to fulfil the following objectives: (i) Study the distribution of Lantana camara in the forests surrounding two settlements Pondi and Samardha; (ii) Examine the impacts of Lantana on livelihoods and well-being; and (iii) Assess people’s perceptions towards Lantana and its utilization in local livelihoods.

The methodological findings of the classification show that the use of wet and dry images stacked with Blue-Green-NIR gave highest user and producer accuracies for Lantana, as well as overall accuracies for both the settlements. The empirical findings show that roughly 40% of the forests surrounding both the villages are invaded by lantana. The Lantana invaded forests in Pondi are 40.5% and in Samardha are 37.4%. The negative impacts associated with Lantana are two fold: impacts on livelihood and impacts on wellbeing. Livestock-based livelihoods have been affected due to Lantana affecting understory grasses and plants which have reduced the availability of forage for cattle, thus leading to higher economic costs associated with maintenance of cattle. The degradation of forests due to Lantana have also affected forest-based livelihoods by affecting the regeneration of economically important forest resources, as well as affecting the current forest composition by causing more intense fires. Additionally, components of wellbeing are also negatively impacted due to higher access time for collection of forest resources as a result of dense thickets, injuries caused by the thorns, risk posed by intense forest fires, and reducing resources with consumptive, medicinal and cultural values attached to them.

Despite the negative consequences, the perceptions towards the invasive are mixed, largely owing to its usage in households as fencing material, boundary markers, rope for tying fuelwood etc. The perceptions are however, starkly different between Pondi and Samardha. 95% of households in Pondi perceive Lantana to be detrimental to their lives and livelihoods, whereas 45% in Samardha perceive it negatively. This is owing to the additional ‘use’ of Lantana as a manure in swidden cultivation practices.

The livelihood strategies adopted in both the villages are a mix of forest as well as non-forest livelihoods. While people in Pondi get 24.9% of their incomes from forest-based livelihoods, in Samardha, 30% receive their income from forest sources. Both villages have a high forest-dependency, and therefore are vulnerable to invasion by Lantana.