Scientists to combat peafowl menace

COIMBATORE: Following the peafowl menace in agricultural fields of Coimbatore, the district forest officials have requested P Balasubramanian, a principal scientist from Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History at Anaikatti to conduct a detailed project about it. The scientist and his research scholar started the project from Perianaickenpalayam and Karamadai area.
They said they would submit the report to the forest department by the end of September and would find a solution on how to control the situation.
M Senthil Kumar, district forest officer, Coimbatore forest division, said that crop was damaged by peafowl in Kalapatti, Sulur, Thondamuthur, Karamadai, Madukkarai and a few other areas in the forest division. The peafowls eat up freshly sown seeds. "We requested the scientist to conduct a detailed project to control the peafowl menace. The forest department will provide fund for the project," said Senthil Kumar.
"We started the project two weeks ago at Perianaickenpalayam and Karamadai. We met farmers and spoke to them in length about the problem. The project is named assessment of conflicts between peafowl and farmers in Coimbatore'," said principal scientist Balasubramanian. He said he had planned to collect details about the peafowl population, family size and their food habits as well as nesting locations.
A K Karthikeyan, a farmer from Appachigoundenpathi village near Madukkarai, said the peafowl damaged tomato, chili and maize crops. "Though we have resorted to different techniques to chase the birds away, nothing seem to work," said Karthikeyan.
Senthil Kumar said some of the farmers used dogs to chase away the birds away from the fields. A few of them installed instrument to emit noises to scare the birds away.
In January 2015, a farmer P Thirumurthy, 40, from Chennimalai in Erode was arrested by the forest officials for poisoning ten peafowl. The birds consumed grains mixed with poisonous substances. The farmer decided to put poison on his crop after his paddy crop was completely destroyed by peafowl. In May 2015, five peafowl were found dead in an agricultural field at Kalapatti in the city and postmortem revealed that the birds were poisoned.
The peacock being the national bird of India, is protected under Section 51 (1-A) of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 and its hunting and killing is strictly prohibited.