Cattle Compensation

In the past years the population of our country has increased considerably and a part of the population lives in the vicinity of forests. Forests have been cleared to make more space available for housing, agriculture, development projects etc, this decrease in the area covered by forest has adversely affected wild animals and the people living around forest areas.

Quoting an example is damage to crops by wild animals such as wild boar, elephants, blue bull and other herbivores has caused severe economic loses to the farmers and has resulted into a conflict between the people and the wild animals. In this scenario the local community living around the forest resort to methods of poisoning, snaring and killing the animals to avoid any further losses. It is such a serious issue that if neglected could have very serious consequences for the wild animals.

Tigers face a similar situation of conflict at a number of locations in the country. Due to shrinking forest areas, the number of wild animals is losing their home and stray in open areas where they are killed for meat or succumb to accidents.

As a direct consequence of this the prey animals for tigers are decreasing in numbers, which means adequate food is not available. In such circumstances, the Tiger ventures out of the forest in search of food and inadvertently preys on the domestic livestock.

Such incidents are becoming more and more common. If a poor farmer losses his cattle, which is also a major source of his livelihood, one can imagine how the farmer would respond. It has been reported from many locations that kill has been poisoned and when the predator returns to consume the left over, the death becomes inevitable.

There have been a large number of tiger deaths reported due to retaliatory actions by the farmer. The situation had aggravated in some areas so much so that more tigers were lost due to retaliatory killing, in comparison to losses due to incidents of poaching for trade.

The most logical solution to this menace is intervention by the government by providing compensation to the farmer, but it has not been very successful since the govt. procedures are very lengthy and most of the time it does not materialize quickly to serve the purpose. It is very essential that such cases are handled in a prompt manner to avoid any retaliatory action.

The poisoning of tigers had become a major cause of concern that an immediate solution had to be found. Reacting to the situation, in the year 1997, WWF initiated a cattle compensation scheme around Corbett Tiger Reserve , Palamau Tiger Reserve and Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. Reports of poisoning incidents were also received from Ranthambore TR and subsequently the WWF Cattle compensation scheme was extended to RTR in 1999.

Implementation of the WWF cattle compensation scheme has been routed through local NGO's at these designated spots. WWF funds are regularly transferred to the local NGO's, after assessing value of livestock and following the laid down procedures the payments are made to the beneficiaries. Compensation is usually paid between 24 - 48 hours of kill to avoid any delay resulting in poisoning of animal.

This practice may not have generated a sense of peaceful co existence amongst humans and wild animals but certainly has benefited wildlife to a large extent and also providing some relief to the cattle losers.