Thread by @mknid

The pregnant #elephantDeath in Kerala may have accidently fallen victim to a trap set for killing wild boars. Now why do people set such fruit bombs for killing wild boars. In search for an answer I checked the legal way to kill a wild boar. It's laughable. Thread

The existing law for killing a wild boar is based on a 2011 order, senior journalist KA Shaji, who has covered Kerala's wildlife thoroughly over the years, told me. What does it say? From what he said, it is practically impossible to do it the legal way.

Killing should take place in a single gunshot, under the presence of a forest official and a conservation worker. The dead boar should then undergo postmortem& set to fire and buried in a deep pit. In return for all of his troubles, the farmer’s incentive is only a ₹500 reward.

Shaji: Following laws are far more expensive, while making a crude bomb is cheap and accessible, even if that puts him on the wrong side of the law. But in the forests, who is going to know?

As a result, the first ‘legal’ killing of a wild boar based on the order, issued in 2011, happened only last week, he said.

Even if it was not a wild boar trap: Add to this mix the land use changes and you get why it was an incident waiting to happen.

"In market-intensive farmlands, every penny counts. And a giant mammal is a stumbling block to their ease of doing business"
livemint.com/news/india/in-…

Spoke to Harish Vasudevan, one of the most visible faces in environmental/wildlife activism in Kerala. He added two more things the law mandates before killing a wild boar: can't be shot when going in reverse direction, can't be shot if feeding. "Impractical lawmaking," he said.

MLA PC George, vent his spleen on this topic in a recent sitting of Kerala assembly: “The law asks us to look at the breasts of wild boars& see if they are feeding or not. We don’t even know when they are entering and leaving our fields, how are we supposed to see their breasts?”

The larger story is how elephant/wildlife corridors are reshaped by urbanisation. High rates of conversion from rural to urban, coupled with little protection for the buffer zones near Reserve Forests, drastically changes wildlife corridors.
livemint.com/news/india/the…