Air rifles issued to farmers

The Ministry of Agriculture will start distributing air rifles at subsidized rates to prevent crop damage caused by wild animals. 

Farmers have continuously requested the Ministry of Agriculture to provide shot guns to prevent crop damage caused by wild animals, the Ministry said.

The Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera attended all the district agricultural committee meetings of Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Jaffna and Puttalam districts and even in those meetings the farmers made requests to provide them with shot guns.

At present, crop damage caused by wild animals has increased and among the animals that cause crop damage, Toque monkeys, peacocks and Giant Squirrels are the most prominent. Currently, these animals have been removed from the protected animal list and wild elephants are still included in the protected animal list, the Ministry said. 

Although the farmers demanded shot guns to prevent crop damage from wild animals, the Ministry of Agriculture started distributing air rifles at a concessional price from yesterday (22). Yesterday morning, the Minister of Agriculture started the distribution of air rifles to farmers in a program held in Agunakolapalasse.

Accordingly, arrangements have been made to distribute 268 air rifles to the farmers yesterday.

The minister who expressed his opinion said that crop damage caused by wild animals has increased and farmers are constantly requesting to provide them with shot guns to prevent crop damage.

Crop damage is mostly caused by toque monkeys. Because of this, even though the initial steps were taken to provide 100,000 toque monkeys to zoos in China, the programme was disrupted due to lawsuits filed by environmental organizations.

However, as there is a risk of a future food crisis, the destruction of cultivated crops by wild animals has created a serious crisis.

However, the proposals presented by these environmental organizations to prevent crop damage caused by wild animals including wild animals are not practical at all, the Minister said.
The Minister also mentioned that the suggestions presented by these environmental organizations were that saris should be hung around the cultivations; plates should be tied to the coconut trees, and half an acre of cultivated farms should be set aside for wild animals.

Therefore, in an effort to prevent crop damage, measures were taken to distribute air rifles at the request of farmers, and the government has allocated financial allocations for this purpose this year, the minister said.

However, the Minister stated that they cannot give shot guns to harm the animals, and asked farmers not to use these air rifles to kill animals, but only to drive them away, and not to use these air rifles for people under any circumstances.

He also mentioned that if any farmer uses these air rifles to harm people, it is mandatory to enforce the law against them.