Maize crop faces wildlife threat

ROPAR: Threat of damage to maize from wild animals like boars, blue bulls and monkeys as well as stray cattle persists in the entire Kandhi belt of Punjab. Due to loss of food sources in their habit as a result of the indiscriminate growth of lantana and forest fires during summer, these animals have become a perennial threat to all-season crops.
The area known as the maize bowl of the state has about 50,000 acres of land under maize cultivation this year in Ropar, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr and Gurdaspur districts.Despite doing their level best, which includes painstaking exercise of spending the entire night awake on a perch in maize fields, about two-thirds of the entire crop in this region has been trampled upon by wild animals.
Over a thousand wild cows in the Noorpur Bedi and Nangal areas of Ropar district have caused havoc to the standing maize crop. Shanga Singh and Ajit Singh, farmers from Heerpur and Parthali villages, respectively, who have 20 acres of land under maize cultivation, said about half of their crop had been destroyed. They said the government should immediately have these wild cows transported to ‘gaushalas’ (cattle shelters) as their livelihood was at peril.
Nirmal Singh Lodhimajra of the Ilaka Sangharsh committee, Ropar, said it seemed that problems faced by farmers, especially those residing in the Kandhi region, had been put on the back burner by successive state governments. Another farmer, Capt (retd) Multan Singh Rana of Mani village said his entire maize crop on six acres had been fully
eaten up by wild boars. Not only the crops but also the plants are not spared by these animals, he said.