The Agriculture Minister Ramesh Tawadkar may well be acting within the powers given to him under the Wildlife Act to identify animals as vermin and allow them to be hunted, to protect farmers and farms, but his possible choice of Goa’s state animal, the Gaur, and the National bird Peacock, to be recommended on that list is shocking and defies logic.
Tawadkar is armed with the Union Environment Ministry’s decision to give permission to state governments to hunt animals in high human-animal conflict zones. The ministry would notify an animal as vermin (nuisance animal) on the basis of recommendations of the state government. The states would be free to hunt these animals for a limited period of time, once the Ministry notifies it.
Section 62 of the wildlife Act permits the Centre to declare any wild animal, other than rare and endangered species, to be classified as vermins, for a specified period of time. A sub-section of Section 11 of the Wildlife Act empowers the chief wildlife warden or authorised officers to permit hunting of an animal or a group of animals specified in Schedule II, III and IV in a specified area if it has become dangerous to human life or property, or disabled and diseased.
When the Modi government came to power at the Centre, a high-level committee headed by former Cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian recommended that the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change should issue a circular, reminding state governments of the “authority already vested in them” to allow culling whenever necessary.
The animals listed under this schedule are protected, but their hunting does not attract high penalties or severe punishments.
When the Environment Minister decided to allow killing of these animals, it had broadly kept in mind blue bulls (nil gai) and wild boars.Therefore Ramesh Tawadkar’s choice of the Goa State Animal, the Indian Bison – the Gaur (Bos Gaurus), as a possible victim of the hunter’s gun is not just shocking but also not in conformity with both, Section 11 of the Wild Life Protection Act and the Subramanium Committee recommendations because it is a Schedule–I animal, according to wildlife (Protection) Act.
It is also a supreme wonder how the Goa’s learned Agriculture Minister has decided to put the National bird – the Peacock – in the assessment list to recommend nuisance animals. No act in this country has empowered any minster, including those with special abilities like Ramesh Tawadkar, to classify a bird, and that too our national bird, as an animal.
Mr Tawadkar’s queer choices of animals (and birds) he wants to identify, to cull, notwithstanding, he and the government both at the state and the Centre must realise that the man-animal conflict has been caused due the actions of man and not animal. The wild animals in farms and at homes (and schools as in Bangalore) aren’t encroaching. These were their habitats first.
Moreover rampant construction in the name of development has cut off green corridors linking habitats. These corridors allow movement of animals from one habitat to another. These corridors have been destroyed due to felling of trees and construction of roads and buildings. Therefore this balance cannot be restored by killing animals but by restoring their habitats. The decision taken by the MoEFCC is contrary to their mandate of protecting environment. It’s a destructive decision aimed at solving conflicts through killing.
Ecology can be never be restored through the barrel of a gun, even if it is in the hands of a wild life officer.
