One Man’s Vermin Another’s Animal?

The Economic Times 12th June 2020 Save

Context: The provision related to declaring and killing of “Vermin” under the Wildlife Protection Act(WLPA) 1972 is not only undesirable but may lead to unintended consequences on the ecosystem.

Legal provision related to vermin:

Definition: The WLPA states that ‘vermin’ is any wild animal that is specified in its Schedule 5.

Notification:

GoI can notify any wild animal as vermin, for a specific period and a specific area, and include it in Schedule 5. States can also send their respective lists; (Section 62)

Actions can be taken by Chief Wildlife Warden if he is satisfied that any wild animal specified in Schedule 2, 3, and 4 has become dangerous to human life or property.(Section 11b)

Current Vermin:

Permanent: common crow, fruit bats, mice, and rats.
In select states: wild boar, wild elephants, nilgai, rhesus monkey, and peacock fall in this category.

Critical analysis of WPA’s provisions:

No clearly defined criteria: As soon as farms are threatened by a species, there is a tendency to declare it as a vermin.

Arbitrary actions: Killing a vermin is done through 4 loosely held criteria which lead to a dilemma:

Only forest officials can kill
Anyone can kill but only through shooting and only licensed firearm
Incentivizing the killing of vermin with a trader driven demand.
Anyone killing through snares

Anonymity of Snares: often leads to killing of animals other than the vermin, as can be seen through recent unintended elephant killing in Kerala.

Unintended consequence to the ecosystem: Killing of a vermin can affect the population of keystone predator species like leopards in the long run.

For instance: the disastrous ‘Four pest campaign’ in China eventually led to the imposting of sparrows in the country from the Soviet between 1958-62.

Failure in distinguishing an animal and its actions: Commercial farming and larger estates have led to the thinking of the animals as part of the problem;

Traditional farmers might have handled it properly.

Conclusion: Need to address the issues of food and water shortage for the animals to avoid unintended man-animal conflicts. Managing wildlife is not the same as treating animals as a game for poaching.