Life Sciences Commons^™

Household Perceptions And Patterns Of Crop Loss By Wild Pigs In North India, Bivash Pandav, Lakshminarayanan Natarajan, Ankit Kumar, Ajay A. Desai, Banteibor Lyngkhoi

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Loss to cultivated crops by wild pigs (Sus scrofa) is widespread and can jeopardize low-income farmers. In India, although there is lot of political interest in the problem, efforts to understand the patterns, correlates, and underlying reasons for wild pig conflict continue to be minimal. We quantified loss of wheat (Triticum aestivum) to wild pigs and assessed the spatial patterns of damage in a forest settlement of Van Gujjar (Haridwar, India), which is a dairy-based pastoralist community. We chose a 4-km² cultivated area comprising 400 farmlands (each measuring 0.8 ha and belonging to a family) and …