Darim and other tales of loss in a hill State

Monkeys have destroyed a whole fruit crop in Uttarakhand

Passing through the Almora hills, a sign board painted Darim Khola points to a village which no more grows Darim — a fruit that the village is named after.

“There are no Darim trees in the village anymore. All the trees have been chopped off for the fear of monkeys,” village head Devendra Nayal said.

Other crops too are affected as monkeys attack whatever little the villagers grow for their own consumption.

“The monkeys destroy everything that we grow in our fields. Earlier, we could keep some agricultural produce for our consumption, and we would still have items in sufficient quantities left to be sold in the market. But, now we grow only because we cannot see our fields barren,” Mr. Nayal said.

Man-animal conflict

The human-wildlife conflict, which especially affects the lives of over 70 lakh people who reside in Uttarakhand villages, has especially affected agriculture in the State.

Wild boar, monkeys, elephants, and nilgais destroy crops across the State. In 2015, crop damage was recorded on 307 hectares across the State due to man-animal conflict. The damage was twice that was recorded in 2014.

In Dwarahat village, which is about 110 km from Darim Khola, the villagers have distributed duties by which every day, four villagers are assigned the task of shooing away the monkeys from the agricultural land.

False promises

“It is a temporary solution, not a viable one,” Madhubala Kandpal, secretary of Dwarahat-based Mahila Ekta Parishad, said.

Each time during the State Assembly elections, the candidates ask for votes on the promise that they would solve the menace, Ms. Kandpal said. However, the problem keeps escalating, she added.

“After we vote them [the MLAs] to power, they simply tell us that there is no solution to the problem,” Ms. Kandpal said.

In the upcoming elections, the Parishad, which consists of 3,500 women from the Dwarahat, Bhikiasain and Ranikhet regions, has decided to vote for only that candidate who assures them to solve this problem.

“They [the candidates] will have to give in writing that they would solve our problem, or we shall not vote for them,” Ms. Kandpal asserted.

Declining forest quality that has disturbed the food cycle, and the proximity of human habitations to forest areas are the primary reasons behind the growing human-wildlife conflict in Uttarakhand.

On February 3, 2016, the Environment Ministry issued a notification in which it declared wild boars as vermin for a period of one year.

With the notification in place, but with no help from the forest department, the villagers who have small land holdings and are not in possession of licenced guns stick to traditional methods of dissuading the boars when they enter the fields.

Hence, even as the one-year deadline of the notification approaches, the villagers have experienced no respite from the problem.