Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought to proactively channelise mounting public anger over the back-to-back human-wildlife conflicts that claimed three lives within a short span of 72 hours against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.
Leader of the Opposition V. D. Satheesan and BJP State president separately slammed the government for failing to protect the lives and property of citizens from marauding wildlife and have sought to make the viscerally emotive topic a Lok Sabha campaign issue.
Congress and BJP also said the quantum of compensation for victims of wildlife attacks was paltry, and the cash-strapped LDF government was hard-pressed to disburse crop loss settlements.
The arguably increasing wildlife attacks have fostered a palpable sense of fear among the large section of the population living in habitations abutting State forests.
Notably, forests cover 30 % of the State’s geographical expanse, and wildlife threat was an almost existential concern for lakhs of settler farmer families in Kerala.
Moreover, crop loss caused by wildlife had arguably pushed the State’s declining rural economy into a death spiral.
So far, lethal human-wildlife conflicts have claimed at least 10 lives since January and resulted in scores of debilitating injuries.
The incidents triggered violent street protests that often transcended party lines. They provoked police action against protesters, resulting in arrests and injuries on both sides.
Notably, Church leaders and settler farmer communities have accused the Centre and State governments of playing a blame game that did little to mitigate the threat.
For one, Union Minister for Forests Bhupender Yadav had recently rejected the Kerala Assembly’s unanimous request to amend forest laws.
Mr Yadav had claimed during a recent visit to Wayanad that the current law invested chief wildlife wardens with enough authority to trap and, if necessary, shoot wildlife threatening human habitations and crops. He suggested the initiative to mitigate the conflict lay at the State government’s doorstep.
Forest Minister A. K. Saseendran had countered the Centre’s position by stating that the Wildlife Act in its current form was rigid and constrained State governments from tackling tigers and wild elephants that attacked humans. He accused the Centre of disregarding a ₹620 crore proposal for insulating habitations from wildlife raids.
Moreover, Mr. Saseendran had said that the Centre’s allocation of ₹15 crore for wildlife management was meagre, and the State could not draw on the funds to compensate victims of human-wildlife conflict.
