Hyderabad: Sirpur’s BJP legislator Palvai Harish Babu flayed the forest department and termed the officials inept.
“They can’t save tigers, something they are supposed to do. And they can’t even save people from the tigers. So, what exactly are they doing?” he asked.
Two attacks by a tiger on two people in the last two days – Friday and Saturday – and the death of a woman in Friday’s attack occurred in his constituency. The MLA spared no words in how the forest department was doing precious little to attend to the problem of conflict with wild animals.
The fact is, he said, people have no faith or trust in the forest department, which is failing to protect them.
Instead of giving “useless and impractical advice on avoiding tigers,” the department should instead focus on scientific methods of tracking their movements.
“The tigers must be radio collared so that they can be monitored constantly, their movements tracked and advance intimation given to people. Why cannot the department pool its resources to do this? This is a practical solution that will save the tigers, and the people,” he said.
“The officials are giving absolutely impractical advice to the people, saying don’t go into your fields before 10 am. This is not possible as during the winters, the skin dries and the sun starts receding as the day progresses. So, the farmers go to their fields early to pick cotton as this is harvest time,” he said.
Babu said the advice that people go to work in fields in group also doesn’t work as families go as a group, divide up and start picking cotton. Finding labour is hard and is expensive, so the farmers have no option. And even the suggestion of carrying drums or making sounds can’t work as the people can do only one thing at a time.
“Instead of finding practical solutions, or providing workable ways out, the officials continue to fail the people with their rhetoric,” he said.
The BJP MLA said he has complained to the principal chief conservator of forests, the forest minister and the Chief Minister several times about the problems of conflict with wild animals, and corrupt forest officials in the district but to no avail.
Suggests radio collaring tigers for tracking their movements
