Catholic officials in India’s Kerala state have welcomed a government decision to declare human-animal conflict as a “state-specific disaster” but protests continue against the state’s failure to protect human lives from wild animal attacks.
At least 14 people, several of them Christians, were killed in the first two months of this year mostly in the Christian-dominated hilly areas of the state, forcing Church leaders to seek government intervention.
As protests increased the state cabinet under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on March 6 approved a proposal to to declare the human-animal conflict as a state-specific disaster.
“It is a welcome decision. It will help the victims of wild animal attacks to get immediate relief,” said Father Jacob G Palakkappilly, spokesperson of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council.
Declaring the conflict as a state-specific disaster would “help speed up rescue operation, relief work, and compensation without many hurdles,” said a government official who did not want to be named.
The chief minister heads the state disaster management authority and government departments are “well integrated to deal with any emergency without much legal hurdles,” he explained.
However, the decision “does not mean that our demand for a permanent solution to the problem is addressed,” Palakkappilly told UCA News on March 8.
The Church officials want the government to fence the forest boundaries to stop wild animals from entering human habitats.
State bishops’ council president Cardinal Baselios Cleemis in a Feb. 18 statement urged the state government to allow “shooting of wildlife that posed serious threat to lives and properties.”
India’s stringent Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 stipulates a jail term of up to seven years and a fine for killing wild animals.
The law was formed to check the fast-depleting wildlife at the time. However, in the past five decades, wild animals such as boars, elephants, and guar have propagated more than the forest region in Kerala could contain, say farmers in hilly villages.
During the summer months, January to May, more animals stray into human habitats looking for water and food when their food and water sources dry up in the forests.
In the past eight years, at least 910 people have been killed by wild animals, according to official figures. However, the state government failed even to apprise the federal government to tweak the law to allow the killing of dangerous wild animals.
“Unless a permanent solution is found people living on the peripheries of forests will not be able to sleep peacefully,” Father Palakkappilly said.
The Church leaders also appealed to the state government to take measures to declare wild boars and other animals that destroy their crops as “vermin” allowing them to kill them to protect the livelihood of farmers as well.
Christians make up 18.38 percent of Kerala’s 33 million people. More than 50 percent of Christians in the state are estimated to be farmers.
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