In recent times, Kerala has witnessed numerous missions to tranquilise and translocate rogue wild animals that killed humans or destroyed crops and properties.
Most of those cases involved elephants, leopards or tigers. Now a gaur that gored to death 70-year-old farmer Palatt Abraham at a farm in Kakkayam, Kozhikode Tuesday afternoon has joined the hitlist.
Under pressure from angry villagers and Congress activists who blocked the Kozhikode-Wayanad national highway and refused to give up the body for post-mortem, a shoot-at-sight order was issued by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Wednesday afternoon. According to reports, a 'kill order' for a gaur is probably a first in Kerala.
The Chief Conservator of Forests (Northern Circle), Kannur has been entrusted with the mission to identify and tranquilise the animal responsible for the death of the farmer. If attempts to tranquilise or capture fail, 'the same animal shall be killed', PCCF D Jayaprasad IFS said in his order.
Kakkayam falls under the Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary and the region is contiguous with forests under the South Wayanad Forest Division. Gaurs are among the 41 species of mammals widely found in the area. The PCCF has specifically instructed that unless the same animal is 'established undoubtedly' it is not to be shot at. "You cannot fire indiscriminately at any gaur in the area," Jayaprasad told Onmanorama.
Tricky part
This is where it gets tricky. How will the Forest Department identify the 'same animal'? Unlike the big cats that can be identified using pugmarks or elephants that have other distinctive features, it is not easy to distinguish between two similar-sized gaurs or other ungulates. "Gaurs cannot be identified based on hoof marks," Ashiq Ali U, Divisional Forest Officer, Kozhikode, told Onmanorama.
"Some villagers said they have seen the gaur and can identify it. We will take their help to identify the gaur," said DFO Ali. It is unclear if the animal in question has any distinctive features like a broken horn or a major injury that might make it easy to identify. But according to reports, the best available lead with the Forest officials, as provided by the eyewitnesses is that the "gaur has blood stains on its horns".
What are the odds?
The first task of the team under CCF (Northern Circle) will be to monitor the region and find the 'same animal'. But there is another problem. "Gaurs are not territorial animals like tigers. The big cats return to a region. But Gaurs like elephants move in communities so if they return to the forest, it will be difficult to find a particular animal from the herd," said PCCF Jayaprasad.
So how long might the mission last? "It is difficult to say. It took several days (10) to catch the tiger that killed Prajeesh (dairy farmer in Wayanad)," PCCF Jayaprasad pointed out. That was even after the tiger was identified from its pugmarks.
