Ganesh Bhat and his family had 40 acres of land near Ukkinadka in Kasaragod district, in which they used to cultivate paddy until three years ago. However, lately, they have not been able to grow paddy even in small patches because of the destruction caused by peafowl in the area. When the paddy ripens, these birds visit in large flocks and eat the crop, leaving the farmers struggling to save the paddy.
“We’d learned to deal with other animals like wild boar and monkeys. But we have no idea how to manage peafowl. Earlier some people here used to catch them, but later they understood that peafowl are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act. Anyway, harming them is also not the right thing to do,” Ganesh says.
Govinda Pai, another farmer from Kasaragod’s Perla, also quit paddy cultivation due to the peafowl menace. “Whom to complain to? Only thing I could do is move to a different crop,” he says.
Another paddy farmer Jayaraj, from Palakkad district, also faces similar issues. However, he continues to farm while simultaneously struggling to protect his crops. “We started spotting them in the last few years. There were other birds in the fields earlier but peafowl were rare. Initially everyone was happy to see them, but later they became such a menace that we aren’t able to plant anything in our fields. Now we use fences with thorns, drums, etc. to shoo them away,” Jayaraj says.
Asokan*, a daily wage worker from Kasaragod district, is an expert in catching peafowl. He is hired by many farmers in the villages around the Kerala-Karnataka border. He catches the birds using different traps and distributes the meat.
“They are a menace to farmers, so they hire me. If forest officials come to know, I will be arrested. I was once arrested for killing a wild boar,” he says. Peafowl are protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and anyone found guilty of hunting or killing them can be imprisoned for up to seven years.
The number of peafowl spotted in human inhabited areas and farmlands in Kerala has considerably increased over the last few years. This poses a major threat to the birds as well as to farmers.
Environmentalists and bird watchers claim that the bird was very rarely spotted in Kerala till the 1990s. Even Salim Ali, renowned ornithologist and ‘Bird Man of India’, has never mentioned peafowl in Kerala in his survey books in the 1930s.
Experts say that the bird is not indigenous to the state and that their appearance is evidence of climate change.
PO Nameer, Professor in the Department of Wildlife Science at the Kerala Agriculture University (KAU), and a team from KAU did a detailed study about peafowl sightings in the state and its causes.
“Peafowl belong to dry, open areas. But Kerala is dense, wet and humid, which is not suitable for these birds,” Nameer says, adding that these birds are a clear indicator of climate change in the state.
The KAU researchers also anticipate that 55% of the state will become dry in the next 35 to 40 years.
“Earlier, our farming community never encountered peafowl menace. Because of that, they have no idea how to deal with it. It’s a fact that farmers have serious issues due to this. They already have many challenges and this an additional new one,” he adds.
The peafowl are found majorly in Kasaragod, Wayanad, Palakkad, Thrissur and a few places in Idukki and Thiruvananthapuram. Nameer says that there is a specific reason for peafowl sightings in these particular places.
“The initial sightings were in Palakkad. It was probably because of the Palakkad gap, where we have a discontinuity in the Western Ghats. The climate of nearby Coimbatore has been largely adopted by Palakkad and it was easy for the birds to come in. Wayanad and Kasaragod also share borders with Karnataka, which might have helped them to relocate. Also, these areas from where they came had many wetlands and ponds, so their natural habitat disappeared,” he adds.
Nameer points out that Palakkad had the finest rainforest once, which has changed now. Kasaragod also faced severe droughts in the last few years. He said that peafowl are found in some parts of Idukki due to its proximity to Tamil Nadu. Even in the Thenmala region of Kollam, the birds enter through the Sengottai pass that connects Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
“If we observe our climatic conditions, it’s getting extreme now. Summer is extreme, winter and monsoon are also getting extreme. That itself is a sign of climate change. The climate here will get drier,” he says.
He said that it is high time the state takes measures to conserve the environment.
“We have protected our forests but the quality is lost. We need to restore our ecosystems and habitats, but it’s not easy. We’re not even discussing restoration ecology. All our forests, mountains, grasslands and water sources should be protected at any cost,” Nameer adds.