TEHELKA,18 Feb, 2012
The damage to the national economy due to crop depredation by wild animals has never been computed. But for lakhs of farmers around India’s many protected forests, it is the biggest challenge to livelihood. In Maharashtra alone, 17,725 cases of crop damage, a 300 percent jump since the previous year, were registered between April 2010 and February 2011.
From 1990 to 2008, wild boars caused 309 cases of human death and injury in the five states of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In north Bengal, gaurs (Indian bison) are routinely causing fatal road accidents, and may soon march on Jalpaiguri town.
Yet, we hate to consider the option of culling wild animals even where pocket populations are over-abundant. The wild boar, in particular, being a resilient and fast-breeding animal, is rapidly expanding its population in new areas. The nilgai is doubly protected because of its religious association. The elegance of the blackbuck or the spotted deer wins over public sentiment though the animals are often a nuisance.
The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, empowers a chief wildlife warden (CWLW) to allow killing of wild animals in exceptional circumstances. Kerala cleared a proposal for culling of wild boars in five districts last year. Madhya Pradesh courageously allowed shooting of nilgais.
Explains former CWLW of Himachal Pradesh Vinay Tandon: “Instead of a blanket policy, we need site-specific approaches. Activists need to understand that saving a few animals risks the lives of many more. It is easy to be righteous but angry farmers do not help conservation.” Tandon’s permission for culling wild boars and monkeys was withdrawn once animal welfare and rights activists moved court.
The popular sentiment is that culling is unnecessary when we can prevent crop-raiding by fencing or by changing the crop pattern. But such measures often do not work, and certainly not overnight. Besides, the end result of such apparently harmless measures and culling is just the same.
Why do wild animals raid crop? Either because there is not enough food inside forests or non-forest food seems more attractive. In the first scenario, if we cut off their access to crop, the animals will starve, eventually bringing down the population. So it is really a choice between death by starvation and culling.
Also, if used locally, contraptions such as electric fencing divert animals to the next village and merely shift conflict. Used extensively, it creates a fenced-in natural zoo. Thankfully, most often, it is not any forest famine but a better buffet outside that draws animals to cropland. Foraging inside forests cannot offer tastier and more nutrient alternatives like sugarcane or maize.
We can create buffer zones so that crops do not stand at the edge of the forest and also promote non-edible crops. Such measures will minimise but still not stop conflict. Effective compensation schemes work where the damage is reasonable. Elsewhere, the only option is to reduce the number of the crop-raiders.
Says National Board for Wildlife member Biswajit Mohanty: “The absence of a legal option has not stopped farmers from secretly hunting the crop-raiders. They do it on a mass scale in Odisha and all over the country.” Such unregulated culling is dangerously random and encourages a practice that often extends to poaching of non-pest species, including big cats.
For best results, each overabundant population must be monitored before culling it to a certain sex ratio so that the numbers stabilise at a low level. Says wildlife biologist Ajay Desai: “We need to bridge the gap between what is on paper and what happens on the ground. If forest officers can neither compensate for the crop damage nor cull the damaging animals, how can they conserve anything among hostile villagers?”
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