DEHRADUN: In order to minimize instances of man-animal conflict, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is initiating the exercise of distributing interesting and colourful pictorial posters about the do’s and don’ts to follow to avoid confrontation with wild animals. “WWF is working on human-wildlife conflict for quite some time. Though we have been holding meetings with the affected villagers to make them sensitive towards wild animals, we wanted the message to go far beyond among those who live closer to the forest area and also remain deeply etched on their minds. For this, we have got posters published about precautions to be followed while living in close proximity with animals. These will soon be distributed to them free of cost,” said AK Singh, senior WWF official.
In the posters, villagers have been cautioned not to go for wood collection or let their cattle graze deep into the jungles, not to go close to the killed prey, inform about any killing of cattle to the forest department , clear the bushes around their houses and farming land, light up the surroundings regularly etc.
WWF is also distributing compensation to the families who have either had relatives dead or injured in animal attacks to discourage them from taking revengeful action on the animal. “Just in October last year, WWF and the forest department had a tough time in preventing people living near Rajaji Tiger Reserve from setting a caged leopard on fire as it was suspected to have killed a local. So to pacify such families and to stop them from retaliation, we have signed a memorandum of understanding with Corbett Foundation for the distribution of a total amount of Rs 15 lakh this year as compensation to the families whose family members have either been injured or died in confrontation with wild animals,” said IP Bopanna, another WWF official.
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