Sarpanches can order killing of wild animals attacking, damaging crops in villages

Hyderabad: The newly minted honorary wildlife wardens, all the village sarpanches, are reported to be a happy lot with the government order that give them the power to order the killing of wild boar that attack and damage crops in their villages. But there is also a sense of disappointment that the order, issued on Tuesday, has no information as to where the money to hire shooters, and the subsequent cost of burying the culled wild boar, will come from.

The sarpanches say that the government should have included instructions to the district collectors, or to the panchayat department or to the forest range officers to release the funds for a culling operation in a village. Or there should have been instructions saying one of the three will make the payments to the shooters.

“There is no clarity on this issue. Now that everyone knows that a sarpanch can take a decision on getting rid of wild boars that are attacking crops, they will all ask us to take action. And they will expect that we take quick decisions,” Saritha Tirupati Reddy, sarpanch of Manigila village in Peddamandadi mandal of Wanaparthy district, said.

“The cost of getting a shooter who is approved by the forest department to the village, the expenditure incurred by him for the shooting etc., will work out to anywhere up to Rs 10,000 a day. This will put us in a spot as we expect multiple demands from farmers for culling boar that attack their fields,” she told Deccan Chronicle. This is the season when most farmers plant groundnut, a crop that the boars can destroy in a single night over a few acres, she added.

In Kumaram Bheem-Asifabad district, Pale Sudhakar, sarpanch of Agarguda in Penchikalpet mandal, said the order was the most useful one so far in the farmers' battle against wild boar. He recalled how he had led a protest last September with 200 villagers demanding that the forest department do something about the wild boar depredations.

“The forest officers keep telling us that our village in the forest, and that we are in the land that belongs to wild animals. Sometimes they tell us even the air belongs to the forest and are very dismissive of our problems,” he said.

“Whenever there is wild boar damage to crops, they say they will give Rs 1,200 per acre as compensation. It costs Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 per acre of cotton, which the boars raid to eat the cotton bulbs when they are raw. What use is Rs 1,200 to us against what we actually spend,” he asked.