Sumitra Pradhan/ Freelance
Yoeseltse Gewog, nestled within Samtse Dzongkhag, is grappling with a persistent challenge that has left its agricultural landscape marred and its farmers disheartened. Despite the implementation of initiatives such as electric and chain fencing, the specter of human-wildlife conflict continues to haunt the community, undermining the efforts of its 600 households spread across 5 Chiwogs.
For the predominantly agrarian population of Yoeseltse, farming is not just a livelihood but a way of life. However, the encroachment of wildlife, particularly elephants, poses a grave threat to both their settlements and their very existence. Compounding the issue is the porous border, making it arduous to safeguard livestock from incursions.
Meanwhile, Agriculture Extension Officer of Yoeseltse Gewog, Mahindra Rai said, “Apart from issue of labor shortage, the human wildlife conflict has become another concerning issue over the years. Farmers are giving up on farming because all their hard work goes to waste at the end. Giving up on farming means contributing to fallow land.”
People now choose to migrate to urban than to do farming. Due to this issue, production has also gone down comparing to the past years. It is very difficult to encourage farmers. To encourage farmers, they provide subsidies to the farmers, access to irrigation channels, chain link fencing and more.
Firm mechanization and subsidy schemes are only the alternative ways to address those issues. Kitchen garden is destroyed by monkeys while elephants started posing threat to human settlement and life of people, he said.
Having said that, “There are people who still manage to do the farming irrespective of the challenges and it is matter of commitment. People seem to lose interest in farming. However, other alternatives were put in place to tackle the issue.”
Kelzang Dorji, Tshogpa of Kinzangling shared that farmers get discouraged every single year due to low quality production due to wildlife conflict. Farmers do put in hard work towards farming, however, at the end of the day most of the produce are lost to wildlife. Thereby, leaving the farmers in distress and hopeless. This is why most of the farmers just focus on kitchen garden, for self consumption.
73 year old Jamtsho from Sonamkha said “Wildlife conflict discourage farmers from keeping up with a farming practice. One has to keep guarding the crops from wild animals. We grow vegetables in kitchen garden for self consumption but it is so unfortunate to experience both the domestic and wild animals destroying everything. So it has become very difficult for us to do farming”.
Moreover, he said that due to huge forest cover, their produce is lost to wildlife. Nothing can be grown in presence of wild and domestic animal. Government issues them with seeds, saplings and fertilizers to which they are thankful, however, it is of no use as at the end of the day, everything goes out to wild life mostly.
Eventually, it’s just waste of time and resources. He said, “The earning from farming has gone down comparing to the past years. Nevertheless, nothing stopped me from farming. One actually needs to have a strong motive to go on; otherwise, it is very difficult to work in this kind of a situation where we sometimes have to bear a huge loss.”
Likewise, many farmers have shared their distress over the issue. They shared that they are now hopeless; however, they are looking forward to chain link services which seem to be the best solution against the wildlife conflict. Otherwise, no alternative did work to address human wildlife issue so far, they said.
An official from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock said that it would be very difficult to achieve self-sufficiency in agriculture production given various factors and one major issue being human wildlife conflict.
He said that when they say self-sufficiency they need to have a required quantity of food throughout the year but because of the climatic condition they cannot produce foods throughout the year.
Thereby, to have a continuous production, he said, “We try to focus in the northern part of the country during summer and southern side during the winter. Achieving 100 percent self sufficiency would be beyond reachable but we are trying to do as much as possible.”
