Goemkarponn desk
CANACONA: With the state government partially acceding to the demand of declaring some animals as vermins, many local farmers worried over crop damage by wild animals such as bison, monkeys, peacocks, and porcupines have demanded to declare these animals too as vermins.
Every year they say that these animals destroy their farm produce before its harvested, causing them huge losses. The devastation caused by the monkeys in coconut plantations has made the farmers leave coconut farms to the mercy of these monkeys.
“The recent order declaring the wild boars as vermins will only partially save our crops, how to save the crop from the other wild animals who are equally responsible for yield and crop produce destruction,” farmers said.
They demanded that the state government should declare monkeys, porcupines, peacocks and bison too as vermins, who seasonally cause large-scale damage to the crops.
On the one hand, the government is promoting agriculture, and on the other hand, these animals create havoc by destroying our crops, causing a total loss to us, added a farmer.
Sources informed that animals destroy about 30 per cent of the total farm produce before it gets harvested.
As a result, many farmers in the taluka have left farming. Large tracts of agricultural land are lying uncultivated because the farmers have been left with no choice but to give up cultivation, many farmers complained.
Also, another issue is the coconut pluckers are not available and the monkeys locally called kethi are destroying all the nuts before they mature to be plucked, informed a farmer who has a vast coconut groove in Poinguinim.
“Earlier, I used to harvest fifty thousand nuts per year, today it has come down to a few thousand. This is the story of all the coconut plantation owners in Canacona, be it in Loliem, Poinguinim, municipal area,
Agonda and Khola, as no solution is forthcoming, no farmer is willing to grow coconut saplings as these animals have become uncontrollable, the only thing which can save us is relocating these animals,” he opined.
About the peacocks, less said is better informed a farmer from Sristhal, like monkeys, no fencing can prevent them from invading into farms, they destroy everything from planting stage to the harvesting stage, farmers are losing their crops every year, compensation received from the department is not enough to recover the money spent to undertake the agricultural activities, he added.
“Bison, too are blamed for the destruction of paddy fields and sugarcane farms; even solar fences can’t prevent them from coming into our farms, informed Tolu Gaonkar from Gaondongrem. Bison is a huge animal; the females roam in herds while adult males live an isolated life and only contact females when they are hit,” farmers said.
He said the leopards on top of the food chain here are in no position to kill them.
“This has led to the multiplication of these animals, forcing them to stray into villages on the fringes of forests. There was the human-wild animal conflict in the earlier times, but with no food available for these animals in the forests, they are forced to stray in the villages,” he informed.
Declaring these animals as vermins may not be the right decision as they are also needed for the maintenance of ecological balance, but again the farmers and their crops also need to be protected, otherwise a day will come the local farmers will feel that it is beyond their means to practice agriculture which they had been doing for generations and generations, he said.
Sources informed that 3338 farmers in Canacona registered with the agricultural department, about 20 to 30 per cent of their crop is lost due to wild animals, a handful file for compensation while others complain orally.