India: Minister in Kerala govt slammed over tiger culling remark, says report

A.K. Saseendran, the minister for forests and wildlife protection in the Indian state of Kerala, has been slammed over his comment that his government might consider solutions including sterilisation or culling to check the number of tigers in the southern state. According to a report by the BBC on Thursday (January 19), Saseendran was speaking amid an outrage over the death of a farmer in a tiger attack on January 13 in Mananthavady forest range in the Wayanad district. The farmer, 50, was severely injured and died due to a cardiac arrest as he was being transferred from one hospital to another. An allegation was also circulating that there was a delay in his treatment.

Following his death, farmers in the area protested against forest officials and demanded that the tiger should be killed.Citing local media, the report said that A.K. Saseendran suggested culling tigers as a possible solution to the problem. The Kerala wildlife minister later told the BBC that this suggestion came from locals who were a part of a meeting with political parties to discuss a way out.

However, his remark led to criticism from wildlife experts. Dr Ullas Karanth, a conservationist and tiger expert, told BBC that the population of tigers only increased by a thousand over the past five decades, adding the suggestion to cull them was not sound.

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Another expert Praveen Bhargav said a recently amended section of the Wildlife Act did not allow the declaration of tigers as vermin, adding that the Kerala minister's proposal was legally not tenable. However, Bhargav, who is a former member of the National Board for Wildlife, told BBC that there was a provision in the law, "in case of serious human-wildlife conflict", where a state's chief wildlife warden could allow a tiger to be hunted" after being satisfied that it could not be tranquilised or translocated.

Meanwhile, another Indian state-Maharashtra saw a surge in man-animal conflicts. From January to December last year, 105 people died due to attacks by wild creatures, mainly tigers and leopards. A wildlife expert Sunil Limaye told news agency IANS on January 7 that humans continue to encroach wildlife territories though there are clear dos and don'ts in place, particularly in the regions adjoining animal sanctuaries/reserves dotting Maharashtra.

Limaye said it is more for humans to beware of the dangers lurking in the wild than to expect appropriate behaviour from animals.

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