Issue of stray cattle in Uttar Pradesh
With more than a million abandoned cattle decimating harvests and farm-based livelihoods, however, electoral winds may blow in strange directions in this largely agrarian and electorally pivotal State.
These stray cattle, were born out of the disruptions wrought on a functioning livestock economy by state policies and state-empowered vigilantes.
The transport and trade of cattle without permits has been illegal in U.P. since 1955.
Cattle trade, however, thrived until recently.
It was enabled by a clandestine network of traders, and the tacit acceptance of communities that the meat industry is an integral part of the livestock economy.
Impact on wildlife in the Terai region
The U.P. Terai landscape is renowned for its thriving sugarcane agriculture and two tiger reserves that harbour populations of endangered species such as tigers, rhinoceros, swamp deer, and Bengal florican.
Here, forests, grasslands, and agriculture seamlessly blend to create a vast wilderness within which people and wildlife live cheek by jowl.
Paroxysmal conflicts with tigers and chronic crop losses to herbivores have been the norm across the landscape.
Some people set up simple fences to protect their farms.
Others, with farms adjoining protected areas, pool resources and use their influence to have fences set up along the farm-forest boundary.
With stray cattle venturing into farmlands proximate to villages and busy roads, farmers are adopting deadlier measures such as putting up razor-wire and high-voltage electric fencing.
These are designed to kill or inflict debilitating injuries on anything that crosses their path.
Reports of wounded cattle dying are common. But the toll these fences are likely taking on the plethora of wildlife that use these farms remains unaccounted for.
In the U.P. Terai, sugarcane farmlands serve as vital wildlife movement corridors.
The potential for large populations of unvaccinated free-ranging cattle to transmit diseases such as bovine tuberculosis and lumpy skin diseases to wild populations also remains underappreciated.
Multiple cases of the lumpy skin diseases were reported recently from various districts of U.P., including parts of the Terai.
The presence of large numbers of cattle within farmlands and along forest boundaries is also creating a large prey base that potentially facilitates the residence of tigers within farmlands, which creates fertile grounds for more conflicts.
Farmers recognise stray cattle as a serious menace, even as they wrestle with their beliefs in the divinity of cows.
The ubiquitousness of tractors, the loss of grazing commons, changing aspirations, and rising input costs have made cattle rearing an increasingly impractical activity.
High-yielding buffalo breeds, so far exempt from bans on trade and slaughter, fill this niche better than cattle do.
Demand for buffaloes is dented only on account of their high purchase and rearing costs.
Terai region
Terai, is a lowland belt of flat, alluvial land stretching along the Nepal-India border and running parallel to the lower ranges of the Himalayas.
A strip of undulating former marshland, it stretches from the Yamuna River in the west to the Brahmaputra River in the east.
It is the northern extension of the Gangetic Plain in India, commencing at about 300 meters above sea level and rising to about 1,000 meters at the foot of the Siwalik Range.
In India, the Terai extends over the states of Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal.
The flatland of Terai was formed by Gangetic alluvium consisting of beds of silt, clay, sand, pebbles, and gravel.
At its northern edge are numerous springs forming several streams, including the important Ghaghara River (left-bank tributary of the Ganges River), that intersect the Tarai and are responsible for its marshy character.
The landscape boasts some of India’s best-known tiger reserves and protected areas such as Corbett Tiger Reserve, Rajaji National Park, Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, and Valmiki Tiger Reserve, Pilibhit Tiger Reserve
In total, the landscape has 13 protected Areas, nine in India and four in Nepal.
Interspersed with the Terai is the Bhabar, which is a region of coarse gravel and shingle deposits supporting sal (Shorea robusta) forests.
The eastern part of the Tarai is known in West Bengal state and in Bangladesh as the Duars.
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