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For many people, a muster of peacocks strutting gracefully as their iridescent plumage catches the light and paints the air with vibrant hues of blues and greens is nothing less than an enchanting sight. In the last several years, however, farmers across India who see groups of India’s national bird react as if they have seen a horror show.
That’s because across the South Asian nation, the Indian peafowl have turned from beautiful birds seen once in a while into feathered gangs that destroy crops fairly regularly. Indian farmers are getting hurt in the pocket as well as in spirit as a result, with months of hard work reduced to a sprawling mess.
“It is not just one group. They come in three to four groups and the whole field is filled with peacocks,” says K Ananthakrishnan, a farmer in Choolannur, in India’s southwestern state of Kerala. “I try to shoo them away but the damage has (usually) already been done.”
Ananthakrishnan says that the peacocks and plainer-looking peahens come in groups of about 50. They do their dirty deed either in the early morning just before the farmers start working, or early evening, when the farmers have left for the day.
Ananthakrishnan has 2.5 acres (0.607 hectares) of paddy, which used to yield him 50 bags of 50 kgs each of rice per acre. Now he is getting only half that, he says, and sometimes just 20 bags per acre. He adds he isn’t the only one being pestered by peafowl; other farmers in Kerala and elsewhere are having the same experience.
This isn’t a new problem, but many say it is getting worse. This is partly because of climate change, and partly because authorities have been unable to come up with any solutions.
One complicating factor is that the Indian peafowl’s stature as the country’s national bird and significance in Indian culture and traditions means it cannot be harmed, much less culled. In fact, it is illegal to kill peafowl in India, as farmers trying to protect their crops have found out. Some local authorities have also realized that trying to reclassify the peafowl as “vermin” can stir controversy and prompt a public outcry.
In the meantime, the peafowl’s natural deciduous woodland habitat has been shrinking, leading the non-migratory birds to seek shelter and sustenance elsewhere. Wandering nearer human settlements, they have discovered fields upon fields of crops.
Widening range, rising population
Dr. T V Ramachandra, Coordinator at the Centre for Ecological Sciences in Bangalore, says that the decline in native forests, with an increase in dry area (degraded lands / forest land converted to agriculture) is the main reason why peafowl are now feeding on agricultural lands. “Forests moderate climate and aid in addressing water availability, moisture content, decline in habitats,” he points out. The removal of forests affects species, he adds.
Yet while its normal habitat has been disappearing, the Indian peafowl population seems to be increasing. Although there has not been any serious headcount of peafowl in India, the consensus is that its population is “generally stable” and therefore has a “least concern” conservation status.
According to the “State of India’s Birds” 2023 report, the Indian peafowl is among the birds in the nation that have the fastest-growing populations right now. Although native to the Indian subcontinent, the predominantly royal blue peacock and brown-and-green peahen can now be found in significant numbers in areas where they were almost absent in the past.
Researchers of the report say the Indian peafowl have spread over the last two decades or more into the Western Ghats rainforest and the upper Himalaya. They used to be extremely rare in Kerala. Farmer Ananthakrishnan recounts that as a young boy the only peacock he ever saw was in a zoo – but now they are found in every district of the state.
The “State of India’s Birds” report is a collaborative study by 13 organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund and the Wildlife Institute. The e-bird system observations from 30,000 bird observers served as the report’s basis.
Among its discoveries is that in Kerala alone, the Indian peafowl population has grown by 150 percent since 1998. Other states such as Tamil Nadu (some 363 kms west of Kerala) and Telangana (more than 1,200 kms north of Kerala) are seeing similar rises in peafowl numbers.
Fast-reducing thickets has led to a decline in the population of predators like jackals, which in turn is believed to be a contributing factor to the increase in peafowl numbers. Another reason might be the bird’s preference for drier habitats, as there is an increase in dry places due to climate change and rising temperatures.
Temperature and rainfall variations play a significant role in determining the peafowl’s range. Because they are known to be accustomed to arid regions, many have been wondering why the peafowl have been growing in number in areas like Kerala, which has a tropical monsoon climate that is characterized by high humidity.
But experts say the peafowl’s growing presence in Kerala only means that the state is getting drier. P O Nameer, professor at the College of Forestry in Thrissur’s Kerala Agricultural University, says: “This is an indication of climate change because peafowl is a species of open dry landscapes, and its presence in Kerala indicates change in climate.”
Beautiful but destructive
Being omnivores, peafowl also feed on insects that destroy crops, as well as reptiles, including snakes. They can act as natural pest controls, but obviously feeding on crops is far simpler for them.
As Vaidyula Vasudeva Rao, a recently retired principal scientist at the Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University in Hyderabad, puts it, “Because it is an omnivore, it feeds on everything, and as the urban landscape is becoming drier due to loss of habitat and climate change it is feeding on seeds during the sowing season.”
In a 2018 study using a controlled setting near a peafowl sanctuary in Kerala, researchers found that the peafowl were consuming 46 percent of the paddy on average, which led to a mean loss of 1,466.5 ± 247.31 kg/ha.
The researchers calculated the economic cost by multiplying the quantity of paddy lost by its then market price of INR 11.33 (US$0.14) ± 3.03/- per kilogram. This resulted in an estimated loss of INR16,615.45/- per ha. Using current exchange rates, that is equivalent to about US$200 per hectare. (Suresh K. Govind, Assistant Professor at Christ College in Kerala and the study’s principal author, says that there hasn’t been any new research to determine the current economic loss due to crops damaged by peafowl.)
According to Rao, the peafowl are seriously harming crops like rice, sunflower, sorghum, peanut, bajra, and maize, along with vegetables that are reaching maturity. But he says that the birds do more damage during the crop-sprouting stage than during the crop-ripening stage.
When peafowl destroy seeds or saplings, farming costs increase because re-sowing is required, which can be a lengthy task in the case of paddy. Ananthakrishnan remarks, “Peafowl attacks during the sowing season have become a menace, which is slowly pushing us into losses.”
He says that he now has to worry about the birds attacking his crops, aside from the usual wild boars. In Telangana, the peafowl have been ranking second only to monkeys and wild boars in the state’s list of agricultural pests. In Rajasthan, peafowl are also the second biggest threat to the state’s agriculture, after the nilgai and deer.
Farmers have tried to beat drums or set up scarecrows to scare them away – with not much success. But Rao says that the All India Network on Vertebrate Pest Management, which he used to head, had created an effective technique to prevent peafowl from causing harm to crop.
“Using physical barriers made of coconut ropes or jute minimizes damage caused by peafowl while the crop is sprouting,” he tells Asia Democracy Chronicles.
Rao says that in tests conducted on a variety of crops in different locales, the rope barriers minimized damage by 80 to 95 percent. He adds that the method, which was developed in 2016, is being used by farmers in Telangana, Karnataka, and yes, even Kerala.
So far, though, it has yet to become as widespread as the peafowl problem. Rao says that even though the method is eco-friendly, it is labor intensive, making many farmers shy away from it.
At the same time, it doesn’t address the possible impact the rising peafowl population could be having on non-humans, such as snakes and other reptiles, and there have been calls for a holistic approach to tackling the problem.
Researchers have created reliable species distribution models for peafowl using the e-bird data, as well as information on topography and historical and projected data on climate and weather, including rainfall, temperature, and humidity. By comparing data from the last 100 years and current conditions, the modeling helped them predict that 50 percent of Kerala will experience drought by 2050 and the drier climatic conditions will help increase the peafowl range.
The researchers anticipate that the peafowl’s range will spread not just over north and central Kerala, but also into the districts of Idukki, Pathanamthitta, Kollam, and Trivandrum, which are located further south and currently have fewer habitats for the eternally beautiful but increasingly problematic birds. But because long-term dry season rainfall is expected to increase, peafowl habitat is predicted to shrink to roughly 32 percent of the terrain by the 2070s.
That means the peafowl could then end up becoming among the species of concern of conservationists. The researchers who prepared the “State of India’s Birds 2023” report, however, say that the time to act is now. “While conservation tends to focus on rare and declining species, it is important to investigate the impacts of (the current) peafowl boom on both people and ecosystems,” they said ◉