Asian Journal of Research and Review in Agriculture

Human wildlife conflicts have been in existence for ages as long as wild animals and people shared the same landscape and resources. Development activities cause more interference in the forest, the privacy of wildlife and these ultimately cause conflict between humans and wildlife for survival. Recently the incidents of human-wildlife conflict have increased considerably, and it had negative impacts on humans- social, economic, and cultural life, conservation of wildlife populations, and on the environment. Man-animal conflict often takes place when wild animals cause damage to crops and property, killing livestock and injuring human beings. Thus, the conflicts between wildlife and humans threaten livelihoods, cost many lives, both humans and wildlife. The major reason for the wild animal attack is afforestation, increasing population and the conflict for common resource base. The study tries to identify the nature, level, and economic impact of man animal conflict on the agricultural sector and to check out the efficiency of government initiatives to prevent the problem. The study has conducted in Thirunelli, the most vulnerable panchayath in Wayanad district and it found that the economic loss due to wild animal attacks is very high in the area and the loss is not adequately compensated by the Government authorities due to administrative and technical issues in determining the loss. Similarly, the prevention mechanisms adopted by the government agencies and farmers itself found to be ineffective to mitigate the problem. Since the mitigation and compensation programmes do not work in favour of the farmers, they were in a situation to move from agricultural to non-agriculture works.