Human-Wildlife Conflict: Tigers And Leopards Caused Maximum Fatalities, Says Report

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The State Wildlife Action Plan 2023-2043 states in the chapter on ‘Mitigating the Adverse Impacts of Negative Human Wildlife Interactions’ that an average of 66 human deaths and 11,182 injuries to humans were reported between 2019 and 2022 in Madhya Pradesh. The fatalities were caused mainly by leopards and tigers, the other animal species reported to have caused some human mortalities were jackals and sloth bears.

During this period, an average of 12,429 cases of cattle kill was reported. The government spent an average of Rs 2.54 crore on ex-gratia payments for loss of life and Rs 93.98 lakh for injuries to victims. An amount of Rs 10.1 crore per year was paid as compensation to owners for the loss of their cattle.

The crop damage by the wild pig is common throughout the state but the severity varies. The maximum cases of crop depredation by wild pigs are reported from Agar, Mandsaur and Shujalpur. In some localities like Sidhi, Umaria, Balaghat, the damage by elephants (loss of crops, properties and life) is prevalent since they moved into the state after a gap of over a century.

The State Wildlife Action Plan stresses that the issue of crop damage needs to be addressed as at present under the Revenue Book of Circulars, any crop damage below 25 % is not compensated. This provision is very harsh on the small and marginal farmers residing in and around the Protected Areas (PAs). There is a lot of public resentment against this and farmers want crop compensation to be removed from RBC and to be assessed and paid by the forest department like human injury and death compensation.

Under priority actions, State Action Plan insists for commissioning a statewide study to estimate the true extent of crop damage, the crops most affected and the species of wild life involved and based on that data, it emphasizes to prepare a long term project for management of wildlife population in and around farmlands employing mass capture and relocation.