SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007 Edition

 

 

IN the last two months, newspapers here have been consistently publishing incidents where animals have gone on rampage killing people and destroying crops. Elephants and tigers have not escaped unhurt. People have retaliated. On 18th June, a Royal Bengal tiger was found dead near Dolong Railway Bridge between Ghokshadanga and Falakata railway station in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. Five days later wild elephants trampled to death two brothers aged five and seven in their home and destroyed 10 bamboo houses after straying into a village in Bangladesh. The herd of elephants also uprooted trees and damaged crops one night at Panihata village in Tangail, 100 km north of Dhaka. Two days later tigers strayed into villages around Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forests killed three people and some 50 cattle. On 28th June, a herd of wild elephants went on rampage, trampled two people to death in a tea plantation in Hautoli, about 250 km from Guwahati and wreaked havoc in the area.

Then on 11th July a bullet-ridden female elephant was found dead in Nepal's Bamondangi region bordering the Naxalbari block in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district. Eastern Nepal's Jhapa district veterinary doctor S Sapkota, while denying an earlier report which stated that the Royal Nepal Police (RNP) shot dead the pachyderm, said the tusk and nails from the carcass had been removed, pointing at it being the work of poachers. Three bullets were found from the carcass after post-mortem, Sapkota said. Earlier a report said that the RNP shot at a group of 50 pachyderms to divert their route, but it was later denied. Three days later, on 14th July, an elephant herd that was attacked by villagers on the India-Nepal border on Tuesday chased and killed a villager in north Bengal on Friday. Kharanand Jaishey, 53, was flung to death at Naxalbari's Kalabari area. Jaishey, who was physically challenged, hadn't heard the herd approaching him, the police said. Wildlife experts said it could be a revenge attack by the herd that was being tormented by villagers at Bamandangi in Nepal’s Jhapa district. Subsequently, a two-year-old elephant calf, which was slightly behind its herd, was run over by an express train on the railway track running through the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary. The accident spot, located close to Gulma station, around 20 km from Siliguri, is a known elephant-crossing zone, identified by boards put up near the tracks.

And on 4th August at least three rhinoceroses and 30 elephants caused havoc in the Jadavpur tea garden in Jalpaiguri district, destroying tea bushes. The animals put a complete stop to work in the garden as panic-stricken workers refused to report for duty to the manager of the tea garden. More than 200 tea bushes of the garden, located close to the Gorumara National Park, were destroyed by the delinquent elephants. Recently, Anil Rabha, 50, a resident of Poro Forest village, was trampled to death when he went fishing in a river inside the forest that falls under the Buxa Tiger Reserve. While his wife who was accompanying him managed to escape, Anil died on the spot. A policy-maker or an academic will say these events resulted from unfortunate man-animal conflicts. Environmentalists will call for more stringent action against poachers and those responsible for killing these wild animals.

But surely there is another side to the story? Forest officials will pay a compensation of Rs 50,000 to the families of those who were killed, even though it is difficult to say how long it will take for the compensation to reach the affected. Concern for conserving the forests and their inhabitants – both flora and fauna – has reached its peak. Given the recent research findings on the fast depleting forest cover and biodiversity and their possible impact on man’s future, such concerns are never misplaced. However, the irony remains that those, who till recently, maintained a balanced relationship with the forest and its inhabitants, are bearing the brunt of the animal-man conflict, while those unaffected play a vital role in intensifying such conflicts ! A legal debate has been going on in the Supreme Court to settle the amount to be paid as compensation to the forest department to divert forest land for non-forest uses like mining, hydel power generation and irrigation, construction of roads etc. Obviously, the forest department and the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) have argued in favour of an astronomical figure of about Rs 10 lakh per hectare of well-stocked forest. The degraded ones will fetch a proportionately lower amount depending on the degree of degradation.

The estimated value reflects the net present value of the resources and services that would have been obtained from the forest land over its life time had it not been converted to non-forest uses. The resources include timber, wood for fuel, non-timber forest products, and the services considered are the capacity of the forests to conserve biodiversity, water and soil as well as its role in carbon sequestration. Those in favour of ‘development’ are pleading for a lower rate of compensation as they think the required investments for development would be higher if this high cost of diversion of forest land is factored in, which a country like India, suffering from chronic scarcity of investible funds, can ill afford. What about the amount of compensation to be paid to those who are killed by wild animals? Has there been any conscious scientific effort in estimating the net present value of a human life that is lost due to our efforts to conserve these wild animals? Is the compensation amount paid derived logically by using all the arguments similar to those used to estimate the net present value of forest land? Or is it just a token amount influenced by the fact that the incidence of poverty is abnormally high in areas in and around the forests in India, on account of which the net present value of life of those residing therein is very low? Anil Rabha from Poro Basti or Kharanand Jaishey from Kalabari, would, in all probability, never ever have boarded a train in their life time. But they will continue to be killed by animals whose lives are often threatened by speeding trains! In the absence of sympathetic support from the powers that be, do the neighbours of Anil or Kharanand have a legitimate right to resort to revenge killing of these endangered animals?

Milindo Chakrabarti is Director, Centre for Studies in Rural Economy, Appropriate Technology and Environment (CREATE)

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