If wild animals comes to your field and destroy your crop or attack you what you should do? You would try to kill the animal. However, Bhutanese farmers are not so lucky and if they want to kill an animal they have to be very careful. According to Bhutanese law, they must kill an animal within the boundary of the field so that they can prove that the animal really came to the field and tried to destroy the crop. If they fail to do so then they would have to pay penalty. Now the government has relaxed the law a bit and now farmers can kill upto 200 meters outside of their field.
Kuenselonline.com wrote:
“Existing rules allow a farmer, whose field is being destroyed by an animal, to shoot the animal, but the animal must die within the field itself. If the animal dies outside the field the farmer is liable to pay a penalty.
This left little room for farmers to do anything. Explaining the killing to forest officials was another task altogether. Farmers must also hand over the carcass of the animal to forest officials.
The new proposal proposes that farmers be allowed shoot the animal that is within the field and farmers would not be penalised if the animal dies within 200 meters from the field’s boundary.
Farmers will also be allowed to keep the carcass of the animal.
The rules apply to any wild animal that has a habit of raiding cultivated fields except for those on the endangered list say officials of the nature conservation division. Wild boar, monkey, porcupine, black bear and deer are known to feed off farmers’ fields.”
Wild boars seem to cause the most problems for Bhutanese farmers. Bhutan takes care of its environment very seriously and the country has a huge boar population. ON the other hand, most farmers do not have guns. They have to depend on bow and arrow. With a bow an arrow you cannot just kill a boar or other animal instantly. So, poor farmers- they are really helpless. The worst thing is that wild boars come in a gang 20-25 at night and destroy the crops.
Bhutanese government should take care of this matter and support the farmers.
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