Rising incidents of man-animal conflict in south Kheri forest division, Dudhwa Buffer Zone in the Kheri district and in Bahraich district, have put the forest authorities and the administration on high alert.
In south Kheri division of district Kheri, four casualties in man-animal conflicts in August – two casualties due to attacks by tigers at different locations, one by a leopard and another assumed in attack by a jackal – were reported.
UP minister of state (independent charge) Dr Arun Kumar along with senior forest authorities visited Maheshpur range of south Kheri district on Aug 28, where a tiger had killed a 45-year-old man, Ambarish Kumar, of Imaliya village in a sugarcane field. .
The minister ordered the capture of the errant tiger and designated various teams to monitor the operation.
A day earlier, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath also held a meeting with the officials of affected districts and issued appropriate instructions to effectively control the conflicts.
Divisional forest officer (DFO), south Kheri, Sanjay Biswal, said that “since Aug 28, intensive efforts were on to cage the errant tiger. Four cages at vital locations had been set up, while close monitoring over the movements of the tiger through drone cameras, pugmark detection and patrolling was on.”
No breakthrough in capturing the tiger has been reported as yet and the tiger of Maheshpur range remains untraceable.
Crop management around reserved forests
Recent incidents of man-animal conflicts have once again underlined the need to manage agricultural lands surrounding reserved forest areas.
According to Biswal, the entire Maheshpur range, where several incidents of tiger attacks have been reported in the recent past, has vast and uninterrupted spans of sugarcane fields around it, which provide safe shelter to big cats as well as their prey species.
“Owing to the sugarcane fields close to reserved forest areas, tigers fail to distinguish between protected forest areas and sugarcane fields and often took shelter in cane fields, where they found easy prey but provoking conflicts with the people,” he added.
Biswal said, “Farmers were being taken into confidence to change the crop pattern around the reserved forests with tiger presence and to opt for alternate small crops like wheat, barley etc so that big cats stayed inside the forests for shelter.”
“Often, the prey species like wild boars, deer strayed away from forests into the adjoining sugarcane fields in search of food and water and while chasing them, big cats also took shelter in the sugarcane fields,” he added and said “such situations particularly during cane harvesting and rainy seasons leads to unfortunate man-animal conflicts.”
DEO KANT PANDEY
