The delay in executing a voluntary resettlement project of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) and increasing animal incursions are compelling settler farmers, including tribal families, to leave their settlements in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WWS).
There are 110 settlements in the sanctuary.
Sources said 24 of the 238 families at Chettyalathur, the largest settlement inside the sanctuary; five of the six at Ponkuzhi; eight of the nine at Easwarankolly; and all families of Narimanthikolly and Puthur had shifted base.
“Though we have 50 cents with title deeds and a house, we are living in a rented house at Kudukki, near Cheeral, nearly 12 km from my land owing to continuous attack from wild animals,” says K. Narayanan of Chettyalathur settlement.
He said 25 students doing courses in institutions at Sulthan Bathery and Cheeral used to travel nearly five km through dense forests fearing wild elephants and leopards.
“A total of 238 families, including 82 tribal families, are living in the settlement and are in possession of 265 acres with proper title deeds. We cultivated rice on 165 acres till 2001. Now, the land has been left fallow owing to increasing attacks by wild animals,” says T. Sreedharan, a marginal farmer from the settlement.
“We are depending on odd jobs outside the settlement for our livelihood,” he adds.
“The plight of farmers in the other settlements is no different,” N. Badhusha, president, Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshana Samithi, says. More than 100 settlers had been killed in wild animal attacks in the past 20 years, he said.
A study in 2010 under the supervision of S. Sankar, scientist at KFRI, Peechi, identified 1,388 people from 880 families in 14 settlements for relocation in the first phase at an estimate of ₹88 crore. But only 213 families had been relocated under the project since it launch in 2011, Mr. Badhusha said.
The settlers fear the resettlement project, the first in the State and the largest outside the tiger reserves in southern India, will collapse if the delay and funds issues are not sorted out immediately.
