Move by India’s popular tourist state could lead to mass culling of the country’s national bird

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

India’s popular tourist state of Goa has ruffled feathers with its proposal to reclassify its national bird, the peacock, as vermin, reports said.

The move, which is aimed at making the bird easier to cull, comes just weeks after Goa’s legislative assembly caused similar consternation when it ruled that the resort state’s beloved coconut trees were not in fact trees, but palms.

Indian state decides coconut trees are no longer trees but palms Read more

“We have listed several wild species, including wild boar, monkey, wild bison (gaur), peacock as nuisance animals,” the Press Trust of India quoted Goa’s agriculture minister, Ramesh Tawadkar, as saying.

“These animals are creating [a] problem for farmers and are destroying their cultivation in rural areas,” he told reporters, according to the PTI report.

The peacock is India’s national bird and is protected under the country’s Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

But animal rights groups fear the Goa government’s proposal to reclassify the peacock as a “nuisance animal” will make it easier to cull the birds.

“Goa seems to be trying to … [have] India’s national bird labelled this way so that they may be hunted and killed,” Poorva Joshipura, the CEO of Peta India, said.

“If Goa wants to remain on the tourist map, people expect it to be a paradise for animals, too,” she added.

Last month, opposition politicians in Goa reacted with outrage after the state government reclassified the coconut tree as a palm because it does not have any branches.

Officials said it was necessary to remove the coconut from the list of protected trees to make it easier to fell “economically unviable” and dangerous trees, and replace them with newer ones.

But opponents fear it means that large swaths of coconut trees could be chopped down to clear space for development.