Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) – A Menace to the farmers of the villages around Ecopark Hamirgarh, Bhilwara

Crop-raiding or crop-depredation involves damage to agricultural produce by foraging either on standing crops in agricultural fields, post-harvest stages or stored agricultural produce. A few studies focussed on various factors responsible for crop depredation as well. Interestingly, there are some popular thoughts regarding a fundamental question, ‘why animals raid crops? In India, apart from Elephant (Elephas maximus), One-horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), and large-to-medium-sized herbivores like Gaur (Bos gaurus), Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus), Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra), Sambar (Rusa unicolor), Chital or Spotted Deer (Axis axis), Wild Pigs (Sus scrofa) and Wild Ass (Equus hemionus khur) are reported to cause economic loss to farms (Bhattarai and Basnet, 2004; Bhattta, 2008; Dave, 2010). In India particularly, nilgai is considered as ‘pest’ and in many states, declared as vermin (Mathur et al. 2015). The damage to field crops caused by nilgai is a major problem in Ecopark and around the village of Hamirgarh in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan. Wildlife raids by nilgai inflicts heavy losses on farm produce with the cost borne by the local farmers (Sridhar,2006, Sukumar,1991). During the present investigation there were losses in the economically important crops like maize, wheat, potato, pulses and peas etc. (Thuppil and Richman,2015), It was established that, damage to crops may be influenced by numerous factors, including animal habituation, availability of native forage, local weather conditions and animal nutritional state (Hill et, al,2002).