Farmers mustn't bear the cost of wildlife conservation

The vagaries of monsoon rains and volatility of market prices are not the only factors that eat into farmer incomes.

- GURUDAS NULKAR & MILIND WATVE

Raids on crops by wild herbivores, a less visible but growing crisis, are also contributing to it. Fleeting blackbucks and dancing peacocks might charm city folk, but they are a nightmare for farmers. Attacks on humans by carnivores, particularly tigers, are newsworthy, but financial losses inflicted by wild herbivore raids often go under-reported.

At the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, we surveyed over 1,200 affected farmers across Maharashtra and conducted in-depth interviews of farmers in the Konkan region. We accessed multiple data sources and studied the damage inflicted by macaques, langurs, blackbucks, chinkaras, Indian gaur, deer, nilgai, sambar, wild boars, giant squirrels, porcupines, elephants, peacocks and parakeets. With this data, we computed estimates of net farmer income losses in Maharashtra.