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More questions than answers as guns, enclosure and relocation of animals touted to protect crops
A committee that recently recommended providing guns to small-scale farmers to control their pest problem has also suggested caging the animals in large enclosures where they would be given food and water or relocating them to forests and less-populated islands in the country.
But the problem with relocation was whether sufficient food would be available on the islands, admitted Bandula Harischandra, Secretary to the Ministry of Wildlife and Forest Conservation. The Ministry was also looking at changing laws in order to control wild animal populations.
“Wild boar meat cannot be transported, peacocks can’t be killed and neither can the giant squirrel,” he pointed out. “So, we’re looking into the possibility of relaxing these laws so we can curb the over-population.”
But environmental groups and Government agencies have risen against a recent recommendation to distribute firearms among small-scale farmers to help control pests.
Monkeys are some of the pests causing serious harm to farmers crops.
At present, farmers with more than five acres of land have the right to protect their property with a firearm. But an expert team appointed by Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has suggested extending the permit to famers with two acres and above.
But the Minister said this week that this proposal was one of many the team had floated, and that it was still at the discussion stage. As an agricultural nation aiming to be less import-dependent, it was important to strengthen farmers by solving their problems.
The elephant, peacock and giant squirrel, porcupine, wild boar and the monkeys are just a few of many pests tormenting farmers and causing massive agricultural losses. Sri Lanka loses 20 percent of its agricultural produce in transport and another 25 percent to pests, Minister Aluthgamage said.
“Forty-five percent of the country’s production is going to waste,” he insisted. “We have now dealt with the issues caused in transport through appropriate packaging techniques, but the pest issue is unsolved.”
The only solution implemented so far is a solar fence. The Minister said this has failed to stop animals from destroying crops. A decision will have to be taken to preserve agriculture. “We are an agricultural nation, not a wildlife country,” he declared, controversially.
The committee he appointed has representatives also from the Wildlife Ministry and Forest Conservation. Its members are Secretary to the State Ministry Maj Gen (Rtd) Palitha Fernando; Additional Secretary to the Wildlife Ministry M D Ratnayake; Director General of Wildlife Conservation M C Sooriyabandara; Additional Secretary to the Defence Ministry Saman Dissanayake; Commissioner of the Agriculture Department D S Pradeep; Environmentalist Thilak Kandegama; and other experts.
The group has so far met twice since it was appointed two weeks ago and is tasked with making short-term, mid-term and long-term action plans.
Arming farmers, sterilisation, and caging were some of the suggestions made, said Mr Kandegama, adding he disagreed with all of them. Arming civilians who have a “Sri Lankan mentality” was dangerous. Caging animals would just create a zoo. Sterlisation of pests like monkeys would take years to prove fruitful as the current generation could go for 35 years or more. It could also contribute towards species extinction which he, as an environmentalist, could not support.
In his proposal to the committee, Mr Kandegama asked that co-existence strategies be explored. He also advocated the study of the tides of the moon and the patterns of the sun and stars to better determine which solutions would work. The ancient farming arts by ancestors such as “mantara gurukan” were also worth exploring.
An approach that combines technology with tradition will be adopted, another committee member confirmed. Their initial recommendations were to be handed in soon.
Other countries used methods such as removing eggs from nests, Mr Harischandra observed, but this, too, would not be welcomed as Sri Lanka was a Sinhala Buddhist country. Pests were also unevenly distributed with some districts having rampant giant squirrel populations and others not having any squirrels at all. The Ministry might, therefore, look at district-specific regulations.
The giant squirrel is legally shielded from any type of harm, even when they enter farmlands and destroy crops. As a first step, the Ministry will submit a draft proposal to loosen the law that affords these animals protection.
Mr Harischandra did question the viability of the proposal involving guns saying it hadn’t been helpful all these years. Farmers who have them now view it as a status symbol, not a weapon. And he said the security risk was considerably higher when guns went into the hands of the more economically-deprived farmers as they might be prone to use them more frequently and widely owing to the strife they go through in life and in agriculture.
Another solution under discussion was whether the Ministry should distribute firearms to groups within farmer associations–they would be trained accordingly–to use during seasons when crops need protection. They would then have to be returned.
Lahiru Prashan, a 25-year-old farmer from Rajanganaya in the Anuradhapura district, owns around two acres of banana and vegetables. Monkeys and peacocks have become uncontrollable. At times, they destroy nearly 70 percent of his crop in one go, he said.
“If we are called away from the land for an emergency, we come back to find that even 30 percent that was left is usually gone,” he told the Sunday Times. Pests will be more likely to avoid their crops if they are shot at as animals remember pain, he believes.
Natural predators like leopards that usually controlled populations of peacocks and monkeys were no longer in these areas and, therefore, the pests were unhindered. “We wouldn’t need these weapons if they could be contained,” Mr Prashan said.
Only third generation children in his colony considered a government job. Most inhabitants depended on agriculture. “We have to kill one or two of the pests and protect our crop or we will have no means of survival,” he said. There are laws to deal with the possible threat to human life–the same danger weapons like knives posed.
Ishara Buddhika, a 33-year-old farmer with over twelve acres in Rajanganaya, has been farming for over 15 years. He felt strongly that distributing firearms would have dangerous consequences.
“In areas like Anuradhapura, most farmers are army deserters and so on,” he pointed out. “A weapon in these hands would be very dangerous.” Farmers had started committing suicide using pesticide when these chemicals were introduced. He feared guns would also be similarly misused.
“Every house in the colony will have a gun under this system,” Mr Buddhika said. “Can you imagine how the nature of, say, election violence, will change when everyone has a gun?”
It was more the case of humans encroaching onto wildlife than the other way around, he maintained. Two solutions to increasing Sri Lanka’s agricultural output was either more agricultural space or more yield from space available.
Sri Lanka only produced about 80 bushels of produce per acre. Farmers in Japan produced approximately 300 bushels per acre. Sri Lanka’s agricultural deficits were not just caused by pests. “We need good agricultural practices, and better irrigation, not guns,” Mr Buddhika concluded.
Meanwhile, environmentalists have risen up against the “ecocide” issuing firearms would cause among wildlife. “This will be disastrous in an environmental and social sense,” said Hemantha Withange, Director of the Centre for Environmental Justice.
Around two million farmers would get access to firearms under the suggested new regulation, he estimated: “Even if only ten thousand of them hit an animal per night, that’s still ten thousand animal deaths in just one night.”
The Government would not be able to control who has the guns, Mr Withanage pointed out. “We can’t save a tree from the chainsaw of an ill-disciplined person,” he scoffed. “How will we save a human from a gun?’
There were natural deterrents that could be used to curb the issue of pests, he continued. These animals were only encroaching farmlands because they were running out of forests to feed off. Market mechanisms like crop insurance could be introduced to help the farmers in the long-term without risking the lives of animals and humans alike.
The authorities agreed rapid depletion of forests caused the wildlife to intrude into farmlands. The Ministry planned to distribute seeds such as jakfruit and wood apple across vast habitats as a long-term solution to the issue, Mr Harischandra said.