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One of the major impacts of CTR on the lives of people living along its periphery is damage to their livestock by tigers and leopards, and to their crops by other wild animals. This creates resentment among people against both, the wild animals and the forest department. Often in the past, this has resulted in retaliatory measures being taken by the affected people, e.g. Poisoning of the carcass to kill the tiger or the leopard responsible for killing their livestock. The forest department gives monetary compensation for the cattle killed but there are long procedural delays in the disbursement. Therefore, TCF launched the Cattle Compensation Scheme in 1994 which was eventually renamed as the Interim Relief Scheme (IRS). IRS provides on-the-spot monitory help to the affected villagers. The villagers inform TCF offices in Dhikuli and Rathuadhab about any cattle kills in the area. TCF team then does an on-the-spot inspection within 24-36 hours.
The team, consisting of an inspector, tracker and driver, assesses parameters like whether the kill is done by a tiger or a leopard, the age of the animal killed, the GPS location, etc. After the team is convinced about the genuineness of the kill, it pays the applicable Interim Relief to the villager. TCF awards Rs. 100 to the informant if a kill case is reported to its office within 72 hours. Information about this scheme has spread to all the villages around CTR and reporting of the cattle kills is nearly 100%. In addition to the two teams at Dhikuli on the eastern periphery of CTR, two representatives are based at Sindhikhal and Rathuadhab in the northern zone of the CTR to physically verify reported attacks and disburse financial relief on the spot. Since October 1997, TCF is running this scheme in association with WWF-India, which funds the Interim Relief disbursed by TCF.
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