Category : Wildlife | Location : Kerala | Posted on 2022-07-11 03:47:46
The story so far: In another instance of human-wildlife conflict in Kerala, sixty-year-old Sivaraman was trampled to death by a wild elephant in Dhoni, Palakkad, while on a morning walk on July 8. Villagers blamed Forest officials for failure to issue warning about the presence of the elephant. However, widespread protests were called off after officials agreed to tranquilise the animal and intensify patrolling.
Forest covers nearly 30% of the State’s geographical area. For a relatively small State with an average width of just around 70 km and a population of more than 3.46 crore, this means numerous densely populated human settlements are located close to protected forest regions. Moreover, a large number of agricultural plantations too lie near wildlife habitats. This is especially true in the case of hilly reaches, which includes most of the heavily forested eastern part of the State. Although this situation makes human-animal conflict inevitable, in recent years, Kerala has seen a sharp increase in the number of such incidents with those living near forest fringes suffering crores of rupees worth of damage to livelihood, mostly due to frequent raids by elephants and wild boars. Over 600 people have lost their lives in Kerala since 2015 in conflict with animals. This has led to a number of protests by affected villagers with some of them even leading to open confrontation between the protesters and the State Forest department officials.
Elephant-proof trenches and solar power fences are widely used in Kerala, and they are considered largely effective, provided they are properly maintained. However, there are several regions where these mechanisms have not been installed. These fences are also often broken by people living nearby to let their cattle into the forests for grazing, and elephants too destroy the fences using their legs and tusks. In a ₹620-crore masterplan to address the issue, the Forest department recommends hanging power fences that will be out of reach of elephants. Moreover, as part of the State government’s new eco-restoration policy, the Forest department is aiming to plant suitable indigenous plants (wild mango, wild gooseberry, and wild jackfruit) in the forest to ensure wild animals’ food security and dissuade them from entering agricultural lands. Such measures need to be supplemented by creating early warning systems that can track the movement of elephants and other dangerous animals using drones and watchers, so that people can avoid going to locations where they have been spotted. However, warning mechanisms are not widely installed in Kerala.
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/explained-keralas-escalating-human-wildlife-conflicts/article65615103.ece
