The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Crop destruction by wild animals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Crop destruction by wild animals

S. Harpal Singh

Increase in wild boar population attributed to shortage of power supply

Animal menace: An abandoned bed made by wild boar.

ADILABAD: Destruction of standing crop by wild animals, especially the boar, has got underway this season with reports of some loss coming in from different villages. It is believed that the threat has become more real this year due to increase in population of wild pigs, attributed to shortage of power supply to villages.

Enormous loss

Though no definite assessment of the losses was ever done, every year wild boars cause enormous loss to farmers by destroying standing maize, sorghum, groundnut, pulses and cotton crops. Villagers had resorted to control this threat by running electricity through the fencing wire. “Both the practices have been discontinued by us for obvious reasons.

The short period of power supply during nights renders the practice unproductive,” said Yelti Laxma Reddy of Rampur village in Adilabad mandal. Wild boars have caused some destruction to the cotton crop in his fields.

Hogs from the forest seem to like to deliver their young ones in dense agriculture fields over soft beds. The female pig makes a soft bed out of cotton stalks on which she gives birth to the young ones. Needless to say the stalks are just torn out of the cotton plant leaving behind only the stem of the plant.

“Boars like maize, jowar and groundnut more.

A marauding animal tramples the plant that results in the cobs coming within its reach. It ploughs a deep furrow to dig out the groundnut,” explained S. Deva Reddy of the same village. Not a new problem for him, Deva Reddy had lost standing crop in about 15 acres of his field to wild boars in 2005.

“Though there is provision for giving compensation to farmers in case of crop destruction by wild animals, hardly anybody petitions for claim,” revealed Adilabad Forest Range Officer Madhusudan Rao.

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