Open dump sites attract wild animals to towns

A commonly heard grouse of the Kotagiri residents is the lack of a solid waste management system. There are several open dump sites near these residential layouts. Wild animals are attracted by food waste and are often seen lingering around or rummaging through the waste. “We do not have a designated space for waste disposal, so we dispose it near the forest,” said Ramajayam. “A lot of wild boars come to eat that.”

Sreedevi, a resident of Krishna Pudur, a colony of largely sanitation workers, concurred. “We dump waste in the stream,” she said. A stream that passes through the colony, a source of drinking water, is seen filled with plastic and other waste. Residents also demand toilets. “Women have to openly defecate before sunrise or after sunset for privacy. There are snakes everywhere. A porcupine almost attacked a woman,” informed another resident, Kannagi. Unofficial records sourced from the non-profit Keystone Foundation that works on mitigating human-wildlife conflict (HWC) in Kotagiri said that only around 30 percent of the households here have toilets.

“We get a case a month on an average and it is mostly gaur or wild boar,” said Dr. Anbu Murugan, assistant surgeon at Kotagiri taluk government hospital, when asked about the frequency of medical cases the hospital gets by way of negative interactions with animals. “I’m treating two cases of forearm fracture from gaur attacks — a woman tea worker and a man who accidentally got in the middle of a herd of gaurs.”

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  Wild boars drawn to waste heaps pose a risk for humans while also attracting other predators. Photo by Chandrasekar Das.
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  A mongoose at a Kotagiri dumpsite. Animals feeding in garbage dumps often end up with plastic in their stomachs. Photo by Chandrasekar Das
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  Macaques find garbage cans an easy source of food. Photo by Abhishek N Chinnappa/Mongabay.
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  A gaur and its calf graze outside a tea garden in Kotagiri, India. Photo by Abhishek N Chinnappa/Mongabay.

Kannigadevi Colony, a residential colony of a little over 500 people is a landmark in Kotagiri town for a legacy landfill. It is to this colony that all the waste from the town goes. A narrow road that barely fits a car, lined with severed heads of chickens and feathers, leads us to the landfill. Raptors, crows, and herons are seen hovering over it and the air is thick with the smell of rotting waste. Residents say that the stench gets unbearable during rain. “This landfill has been there even before the colony came up 40 years ago, said Thangadurai, a resident. “Earlier, there was very little waste. But now, with the increasing population, the waste is also increasing.” Census records from 2011 show that the population in the Nilgiris has increased by almost 20 percent since 1981.

In 2011, torrential rains brought a portion of the landfill down, burying a family of three alive. The incident increased the demand to relocate the landfill. “Bears have started coming, as the smell of waste attracts them,” Thangadurai said. “We’ve asked them (authorities) to move it but they haven’t done anything.”.

The residents informed us that an anganwadi (child care centre) in the colony has been shut down due to frequent bear visits to the colony. Snakes like Russell’s vipers, previously not found in the highlands, are also being spotted in the Nilgiris, which experts believe could be due to a warming climate. Nilgiris District Forest Officer (DFO) Gowtham S. told Mongabay-India that open waste dumping sites are an issue and the department has taken notice of it and are in the process of finding a solution.

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  A sloth bear entered the house of Jayasudha in Kotagiri's Indira Nagar colony, looking for food. Photo by Abhishek N Chinnappa/Mongabay.
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  Nandakumar (left) and Ranjith (right) stand outside their house, which a sloth bear had broken​ into in search of food in a village near Kotagiri. Photo by Abhishek N Chinnapp/Mongabay.
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  Chandrasekar Das, a programme coordinator with Keystone Foundation, says that the lack of trained wildlife veterinarians in Kotagiri often causes the death of trapped and injured animals. Photo by Abhishek N Chinnappa/Mongabay.

Animals pay a price negotiating space with humans

Wild animals, meanwhile, seem to be getting more comfortable with human presence. Getting adapted to rapidly expanding human habitations, however, does not always work in their favour. Wild animals get killed or get hurt falling into open wells or being caught in snares. Kumar, the wildlife veterinarian, said that animal deaths from poisoning are also common. Post-mortems of certain animals have revealed plastic, cloths, and nylon ropes in their gut.

Despite increasing incidents of conflict with humans, Kotagiri does not have a wildlife veterinarian to call for action when a wild animal is in danger. A local veterinarian, who is not trained to handle wild animals, is often summoned to handle minor injuries. In cases of major injuries or cases that involve Schedule 1 species, a wildlife veterinarian from Mudumalai or Coimbatore, which are over 70 kilometres away, is brought. “Precious time is lost in saving the animal,” said conservation photographer Chandrasekar Das, who works with Keystone Foundation in animal rescue and human-wildlife conflict (HWC) mitigation. He recalled a case where a leopard caught in a snare was dead by the time the vet arrived from Mudumalai almost six hours after the incident.

Kumar agrees that a vet specialised in wild animals is needed in conflict-prone places like Kotagiri. “Equipping local vets with techniques to deal with wildlife through frequent workshops is also an option,” he said. Gowtham mentioned that the department is in discussion with government authorities to have one wildlife veterinarian in every forest division, which could help solve the issue.

More sightings of and encounters with animals build fear and hostility in people. In Kotagiri, cases of negative interactions put pressure on the forest department to capture and relocate the animal, often to Mudumalai National Park where there are predators such as tigers, or the upper Bhavani area where the fate of the relocated animal is often not monitored, said Chandrasekar. “These are urbanised animals who may not survive in the wild,” he said.

Gowtham, however, begs to differ. “Just because they are used to human presence doesn’t take their basic animal instincts away,” he said. “In fact, they have a better chance of surviving in the wild than in towns.” He added that the forest department has enough field staff that are constantly monitoring the animals in areas they are released.

Banner image: Sloth bears, attracted to the garbage dumps near Nilgiris’ towns, are most feared by residents. Photo by Chandrasekar Das/Keystone Foundation.

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Aditi Tandon Senior Production Editor

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ConservationHuman Wildlife ConflictWaste managementWildlifeIndiaTamil Nadu

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