Human beings and indisciplined wild animals cannot live together in a small state like Nagaland. Wild animals like Elephants and Rhinos cannot accommodate along with the farmers in a place like Nagaland, where there is no Government Reserved Forest. To preserve wild animals as centurion, sufficient area of land at least 1,000 sq. miles of Government Reserved Forest is needed.
In a State like Nagaland, Bangladeshi terrorists and wild animals like Elephants and Rhinos that were harmful to innocent public cannot live where there are no sufficient hideouts.
It is to state that the Government of Nagaland allowed DHEP Development within the border areas of Zunheboto District and Wokha District and acquired 14,000 acres of Jhuming land that reduced our cultivable land by 50%. The effect was so serious for the survival of the farmers in these infected areas.
While struggling for the shortage of cultivable land, wild Elephants in several groups penetrated into the area of DHEP surroundings and damaged all the agricultural crops and forest plantations. Further, the wild animals dismantled all the farm houses (including buildings). The animals are so furious that the villagers can no longer go to that area and cultivate their field where the wild animals are roaming.
It is our last and sincere appeal to owners of those animals, if any, to take them away to your reserved forest or eliminate them as you decide. Otherwise, to compensate the loss of the properties and the cost of abandoned whole areas for years by many villages may not be possible to compensate in terms of rupees for the owners (be it Govt. or private).
The public of the areas might demand alternative “exact size” of the areas for shifting the villages from our ancestral villages to the exchanged alternative sites, if no action is taken from the owners of the animals within March 2007, we shall consider those animals as our forest resource and take the action as per the Naga Customary Law and the Naga Tradition on indisciplined animals. This is in compliance to the Tribal Bill passed in Lok Sabha on 15th December 2006 and published in Nagaland Post on 16th December 2006 and 31st December 2006, that authorized forest resources ownership right to the tribals, who lived many generations in the said land. Because, anything that are existing in our ancestral lands are our forest resources.
I Vitokhe Sema
Senior Citizen
Littami Village, Zunheboto
