Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension Education & Rural Sociology, CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalya, Palampur-176062, Himachal Pradesh
*Corresponding author: rkthakurkvk@yahoo.co.in
Online published on 22 February, 2021.
Agriculture provides livelihood for the majority of the rural households of hilly regions. The population of both wild as well as stray cattle in these regions is continuously increasing and has assumed the form of menace. As such, animal menace has emerged as one of the major threats for farming. The present study is based on the primary data collected from 60 farm households selected through three stage random sampling technique in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh. The study examined various aspects of this problem such as animal species responsible, frequency of crop raiding, extent and degree of menace and crop damages, etc. The results revealed that cattle, monkey, wild boar, sambhar and nilgai are the major animal species associated with crop damages. Among these, the problem of cattle was reported to be of relatively recent origin (2-5 years) compared to wild animals’ menace (5-10 years). During 2009-2015 period there has been a significant increase in animal population: it increased from 1.68 to 8.53 in case of stray cattle while it went up from 5.66 to 29.48 for wild animals with monkey as dominant species. The majority of the respondents were of the view that these animals raid the fields once in a week during day/night hours. As far as degree of menace was concerned, the problem of wild animals was more serious compared to the stray cattle, around 47 and 33 per cent of the respondents attributed the degree of menace as of medium and high degree, respectively. Further, among the wild animals the degree of monkey menace was the major concern round the year (summer, winter and rainy season). Stray cattle, sambhar, nilgai were found to damage the crops during all stages while monkey and wild boars damaged the crops during reproductive/maturity stage. In vegetative growth stage cattle caused highest loss to crops while during maturity stages of crop, monkey were responsible for highest extent of losses to crops.
