Thirty-year-old Eva Gurung of Lhamoilum in Tsirang remembers spending sleepless nights guarding his paddy every autumn.

The father of four said that, in the last six years, he and his family made four makeshift huts to guard their crop. But the wild boars, which came in groups of 15 to 25, ate more than half his total yield. 'All our effort go to waste when we wake up in the morning and see our crops destroyed,' he said.

Located next to thick forest, he could not harvest any maize from his two-acre land last summer.

His neighbour, Ganja Bahadur, 36, made fires and scarecrows to guard his own five-acre paddy field. His school-going children also had to sleep in the fields.

But this year, with the installation of four 400 m long sound and alarm fencing devices, farmers living in the 10 households of the village will not have to undergo the torment.

The device, which trips off an alarm siren and a flashlight when the animal pushes the fence, will scare the animal off and alert the farmers. 'We'll chase away the animals and then put off the sound and light,' said Nanda Ram Gazmer, 58.

Installing the device and handing it over to the community on September 24, a dzongkhag forest official, Chimi Dorji, said that the nature conservation division (NCD) procured the sound and light fencing devices to tackle human-wildlife conflict. 'The pilot phase has been set up in Dunglagang as the gewog has the maximum cases of human-wildlife conflict,' he said, adding that, if the implementation succeeds in minimizing human-wildlife conflict, it will be implemented in other gewogs. The territorial range officer, D B Chettri, said that the gewog and community should handle the device with care so that it could be used on a rotational basis. 'During maize cultivation, they could use in dry lands and, during paddy cultivation, the farmers could shift it here,' he said.

The device costs about Nu 3,000 (S$88.62) per set.

By Tashi Dema