A special panel, formed to address farmers’ woes of wildlife conflict, met virtually on Thursday to discuss the menace caused by wild animals in agricultural fields.
Based on an announcement made during the agriculture budget for 2023-2024, a joint committee comprising farmers, technical experts and officials from Departments of Forests, Agriculture, Horticulture, and Revenue was ordered to be formed to recommend measures for reducing conflict between wild animals and farmers. In the 19-member committee’s first meeting, held on Thursday, farmers from Erode, Coimbatore, Dindigul, Krishnagiri, and Dharmapuri voiced their concerns about damages to crops caused by wild boars, peacocks, elephants and, in some cases, monkeys.
Chief Wildlife Warden Srinivas R. Reddy told The Hindu that the meeting was held to take stock of the issues and look at various measures and suggestions to manage the conflict. As a first step, conflict areas and the presence of wildlife have been planned to be zonated into high, mid, and low levels.
“Some data are already available, but ground truthing will be done,” he said. Site-specific issues would be factored in too, he added. For instance, in districts such as Chengalpattu, Tiruvarur and Thanjavur, wild pigs are known to damage paddy fields that are nowhere close to forests. These animals, instead, come from prosopis thickets. “We need to assess if they are wild, domesticated or feral pigs first,” he said.
The committee will make field visits to Kerala and Karnataka to assess their wildlife management strategies, particularly for wild boars. In a contentious move, Kerala had empowered local bodies to cull wild boars that pose a threat to agricultural crops. Mr. Reddy said the committee would look at other means and implement an integrated approach that benefits the farmer and protects wildlife.
A balanced and a humane approach is needed to deal with wildlife as every species has an important part to play in an ecosystem, said Antony Rubin, member of State Board for Wildlife, who is also a part of the committee.
