Row over Kerala CM's suggestion for controlled hunting

Thiruvananthapuram: The man-animal conflict in Kerala is snowballing into a major row with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan suggesting controlled hunting as a remedy while environmentalists have strongly objected to it.

Meanwhile, a 67-year-old woman was killed at Malakkapara in the suburbs of Thrissur district in a wild elephant attack during the early hours of Thursday.

It was in the wake of back-to-back incidents of man-animal conflicts that the Chief Minister said the other day that controlled hunting and other wildlife population management measures need to be allowed to address the issue. He also cited that many foreign countries were carrying out controlled hunting. State forest minister A K Saseendran also backed the opinion.

In an open statement, a group of environmentalists and ecological scientists, under the banner Coexistence Collective- Kerala (CC-K), flayed the Chief Minster's statement. They pointed out that ‘hunting’ is considered illegal and a serious crime in the country.

Alleging that the state leadership was yielding to the vested interests of those indulging in illegal activities in forests, CC-K said that controlled culling was being carried out in foreign countries where the population of wild animals was increasing drastically. In Kerala, the population of tigers and elephants is coming down by about 30 percent and 58 percent respectively.

"The Chief Minister’s proposal for hunting as a population control measure is not only unsupported by scientific evidence but also dangerously misaligned with the current ecological crisis," they said.

Meanwhile, forums like the Kerala Independent Farmers' Association welcomed the Chief Minister's suggestion.