By Sanjeeb Baruah, IANS
Guwahati : Every morning in Assam’s Kuthori village, adjoining the famed Kaziranga National Park, people wait anxiously to find out whether their crops are safe from rampaging elephants, wild buffaloes and rhinoceroses.
Broken and bent tree branches, deep depressions on earth and vast tracks of trampled paddy stalks mixed with mud, where the paddy crops once stood, reveal what happened the previous night.
But in this high man-animal conflict zone in Naogaon district, 200 km from Guwahati, villagers are now heaving a sigh of relief. For the first time an electric fence is to be constructed to prevent animals from entering their fields.
Two local welfare organisations, Duar Bagori Samabai Samiti and Kuthori Krishi Unyaan Committee, have teamed up with a conservation organisation, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), to complete the work in a 50:50 partnership.
The 12-km stretch from Kuthori to Deopani in the Bagori forest range is an important animal corridor. Wild animals use the corridor to move to the adjoining highlands in Karbi Anglong during the monsoon season. In the dry season, between September and February, they come here to raid crops.
There are eight villages in the corridor where over 5,000 people live. In Kuthori alone, wild animals destroyed 150 hectares of crops last year.
“The project will cover all the villages, though initially we will complete fencing in the three blocks identified by the villagers,” said Dilip Deori of WTI.
“The laying of posts has already started from the Kuthori tiniali (a tri-junction) in the village. It will be a four cable power fence,” he said.
The villages and National Highway 37 that pass through the corridor at the southern boundary of Kaziranga have been a major source of human-animal conflict.
Currently, around 400 hectares of rice and 270 hectares of mustard are cultivated in the area. Most of the cultivation is done communally under the aegis of the two local organisations, which also provide the produce to villagers at subsidised rates.
“The electric cable and installation posts will be provided by villagers while the WTI is providing the energisers, battery insulators and other equipment, besides technical guidance,” Deori said.
“The electric fence will be removed during the monsoon season as crop raiding is common in the dry season.”
“The farmers had to bear more losses in the dry season since they had to spend on irrigation. Last year, nearly 150 hectares of paddy and mustard crops were destroyed by wild animals,” he said.
Last year, a major accident occurred on the highway here when a passenger bus collided with a wild buffalo, killing the animal as well as several people on board.
“The delay in giving compensation for crop damage to affected villagers also made the situation complicated, as poachers could take advantage of the situation,” said Kaziranga Park director S.N. Buragohain.
“We already had a plan to fence some areas of the park, mainly to keep away stray cattle from entering the park, to prevent the spread of diseases to wild animals. The current initiative by the villagers is a positive step in that direction.”
“There are 150 revenue villages in the southern bank of Brahmaputra in Kaziranga adjoining Karbi Anglong. In the north bank we haven’t done any survey so far,” he added.
“The fencing is only for the dry season and should not create any problem to wild animals,” he said.
Deori said the fencing would not only protect the crops but also help check poaching, illegal fishing and other activities in the park. The checkpoints that will be set up for the upkeep of the fence will be guarded round the clock by the villagers.
“If the project becomes successful we will try it in other places,” he said.