Daijiworld Media Network – Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Jun 23: After conservationist Kirthi Karanth and her organisation ‘Wild Seve’ were honoured with the prestigious Rolex Awards for Enterprise on June 14, Karnataka Forest department stated that Karanth’s claims on facilitating compensation to thousands of human-wildlife conflict victims in Karnataka as ‘baseless’ and ‘false.’

The citation awarded to Karanth reads, “Wild Seve identifies conflict hotspots and currently serves half a million people living in 600 villages near Bandipur and Nagarahole Parks in Karnataka. It has filed 14,000 claims for 6,400 families, worth $200,000, which has decreased hostility and increased trust between conservationists and communities.”

Punati Sridhar, principal chief conservator of forests told Times of India, “Even to facilitate payment in a single case, one has to interact with forest and department officers. No such interactions happened with Wild Seve. Moreover, the department pays ex gratia and not compensation. So the claim of ‘compensation’ itself is flawed.”

The forest department released a statement, "The activities such as crop-livestock damage assessment, processing of claim records, and settlement of compensation-ex-gratia payment claims etc. are performed by the forest officials of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, Karnataka. Hence, the claims being made in this regard by any individuals, organisation, or NGOs are false baseless and far from the truth.”

Kirthi counters ‘baseless’ allegation

Kirthi Karanth in a clarification has hit back at forest department’s allegations and termed it to be ‘absurd.’

"The Wild Seve programme does not claim that it has provided direct compensation payment as is alleged. We have built 48 livestock sheds for rural beneficiaries as well as borne expenses of managing the project. We also want to make clear that there may be other cases of wildlife damage which were filed with the government without our assistance. Nowhere have we claimed that such cases were facilitated by our Wild Seve programme,” reads the statement issued by Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS) of which Karanth is the director.

“Providing such assistance to victims of wildlife conflict is a perfectly legal activity which is encouraged by the government,” CWS added.

“All the 13702 claims for ex-gratia compensation handled by Wild Seve were submitted to forest department local staff on behalf beneficiaries for the past four years. For the forest department to now assert it was unaware of these claims is absurd,” countered Karanth’s organisation.

The Rolex Award for Enterprise is awarded by Rolex, the luxury watch maker, to people with innovative and original ideas that are changing communities. The winners are also given a large financial grant to further their projects.

Meanwhile, the forest department has not backtracked on its allegation on Karanth and her organisation. Punati Sridhar told media that Rolex has been alerted regarding the 'false claim’ through its twitter handle and they are yet to respond.