TIRUNELVELI: When 52-year-old A M Shahul Hameed (52) was on an early-morning inspection of his farm in Vadakarai recently, he was unprepared for what lay in store. A majority of the carefully nurtured coconut and plantain trees lay wasted. This was the second instance of his farm being damaged by elephants in the past few months.
Hameed's is not an isolated case, but a representative of what the farmers from around 40 villages under Shencottai and Kadayanallur taluks in the district have been suffering for the past many months. Things have come to such a pass that farmers are increasingly mulling switching their profession to a lesser paying, but secure one. A case in point is the transition of one Mohammad Meeran from a farmer to a tea stall owner.
The past week has been of particularly damaging prospects, with at least four animal intrusions being reported. Hameed told TNIE that a few months ago his plantain crop spread over one acre was damaged by elephants. "It was after that I planted coconut. The trees had reached fruit-bearing stage. Now, they have been damaged," he said.
A cross-section of farmers told TNIE that such issues have become the norm in Vadakarai and Kadayanallur. This spike in elephants straying into farms is indicative of a systemic collapse that put paid to many efforts aimed at curbing man-animal conflict. Between 2005 and 2012, electric (solar) fences were erected on a 120-km stretch spanning from Courtallam, Kadayanallur, Sankarankovil to Sivagiri. However, lack of regular maintenance, owing largely to a fund crunch, resulted in the Forest Department's efforts going waste. Now, people are reliant on the risky activity of chasing away the pachyderms using crackers.
The 40-odd villages under Shencottai and Kadayanallur taluks are prone to elephants straying into residential areas owing to its proximity to the Western Ghats. Given the landform and the soil composition, farmers find the cultivation of short-term crops like banana, groundnut, black gram, paddy and sugarcane lucrative. For the long-term, they prefer coconut, Indian gooseberry, cashew, and mango. And, these are the very crops the elephants have a partiality for.
Farmers here remember a time when animal intrusion was occasional, which coincided with mango and paddy seasons. Around 2007, a herd of 15 elephants camped in the periphery of the settlements and started intruding the farms. A 75-km-long elephant-proof trench covering Courtallam, Kadayanallur, Sankarankovil and Sivagiri seemed like a good idea, and it clicked. However, farmers claim that the pachyderms that were on this side of the fence could not return to the forests.
However, what a senior forest official has to say twists the entire narrative of the villagers and raises a pertinent question: who is the real intruder? The official from Kadayanallur told TNIE that what is farmland today could have been an elephant corridor, say 20 or 50 years ago. "A herd stays in a region for at least two years before moving away. This herd has gotten habituated to the ready availability of water and food in the land. A lack of proper protective measures could be one of the reasons for repeated raids. Elephants have a strong sense of smell. This could be used to their advantage by the farmers, who can burn neem or other dry leaves to keep the pachyderms at bay. The range under Kadayanallur is expansive; officials have to travel for nearly an hour to reach the site of an incident. We have advised them change crop pattern and even have instituted a relief fund. We will continue monitoring the elephant movement as despite the elephant-proof trench, the corridor is open for them to return to the wild," he said.