In protest against the delay in completing the building of fences along forest land, the Janadhipathya Karshaka Congress has threatened to picket the Peruvannamoozhi Forest Office on Monday. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) leaders in the area have reportedly offered their support to the protest.
Farmers’ action committee leaders say the straying of wild animals into farmlands has been causing huge crop loss for the settler farmers in Muthukad, Peruvannamoozhi, Pannikode, Chembanoda and Poozhithodu areas.
According to them, nearly 25 km of open forest boundary exposed the farmlands to wild animals, including elephants and wild boars. The installation of solar fences is yet to be completed in the vulnerable stretch though the Forest Department has been making promises aplenty, they add.
A Janadhipathya Karshaka Congress leader said the main demand of the farmers in the area was to make use of the discarded railway tracks to erect strong fences around vulnerable forest areas. Such preventive measures were successful in States such as Karnataka, but the authorities here were found disinterested in such a project, he says.
Farmers having agriculture property closer to forest areas say the trenches constructed on some stretches remain ineffective. Several such trenches have been filled with soil as a result of unscientific construction.
