A high-level meeting headed by the Additional Chief Secretary and head of the forest force has decided to form 10 missions to tackle the rising human-wildlife conflict in the State. The meeting has decided to issue notices to the owners of forested estates to immediately clear the wildlife growth on the estates.
A real-time monitoring system will be set up to track the presence of wild animals near residential areas. Further, the meeting decided to follow up on the proposal submitted to the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) to provide advanced facilities and systems to the 28 Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) operating in the State.
Caution will be given to those traveling at night on roads passing through forests.
As part of the Mission Real-Time Monitoring, elephant passes and regular movement routes of wild animals in all forest divisions of the State will be continuously monitored and preventive measures will be put in place to avoid man-animal conflict, while ‘Mission Primary Response Teams’ will make sure the formation of Primary Voluntary Response Teams to ensure time-bound intervention in human-wildlife conflict issues in the State.
These teams will reach the conflict zones immediately and take the necessary preliminary steps to solve the crisis even before the RRTs reach the spot.
Through the Mission Tribal Knowledge,theDepartment of Forests and Wildlife in association with the Kerala Forest Research Center will initiate a collection of traditional knowledge adopted by 36 tribal communities of Kerala for human-wildlife conflict mitigation.
It is expected that the indigenous practices of tribespeople to avoid human causality in human-animal conflicts would be protected through this, and scientific testing of its effectiveness will be made.
The Mission Food, Fodder and Water willprevent wild animals from being attracted to inhabited areas and ensure that they have access to food and water within the forest itself, while Mission Bonnet Macaque and Mission Wild Pig aredesigned to control the menace of wild monkeys through legal means and restrict the population of wild pigs, for which the service of empanelled shooters will be used.
Mission SARPA will eliminate snakebite deaths by strengthening the production and distribution of anti-venom apart from strengthening awareness among the people. Mission Solar Fencing has put 848 kms of solar fencing into operation and will continue the same, while Mission Sensitisation to Public will hold awareness campaigns on human-wildlife conflict in each region according to the speciality of each terrain.
