She told The Pioneer, “Three times the Uttarakhand Forest Department wrote back saying that although they have no data or study, it is their hunch that there are too many boars and they should be killed. It is shocking why the notification was still passed. This indicates that the reasons for the notification could be quite different from the stated purpose of saving agriculture. The Uttarakhand forest department has been found to be mixed up with organised poaching gangs in the past as well and this could be a tradeoff between two corrupt and lethargic departments,” she opined.

According to Maulekhi, notification dated 03.02.2016 issued by the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change declaring wild boar as vermin in the State of Uttarakhand was challenged by her in the high court which issued notice and gave the respondents-- MoEFCC and the State a period of three weeks to respond with no extensions.

According to the petitioner, “It is the first time in the history of India that such a notification has been passed by the Central Government. Until 2015 and 2016 animals were removed from the category of vermin and protected. Using the provisions of Section 62 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 is regressive and key issues such as loss of wildlife cover and leaving the animals with no option about where to get food or shelter from has not been addressed at all. So much so that no authority has bothered to understand that should animals like wild boar, nilgai and monkeys be killed larger predatory animals will have little prey base and may frequent towards human habitations. The Uttarakhand Government has a particularly weak case. It has in its response to the center seeking data in support of its plan to kill wild boars on 23.07.2015 clearly stated that no assessment, survey etc of the ground situation has been conducted, but the proposal is being submitted owing to complaints received from ‘elected representatives and local people’. The chief wildlife warden went on to describe in detail that potatoes, turmeric, ginger, kidney beans, radish etc are the crops that are getting affected but fails to supply any details of the extent of crop damage or any factual assessment of the population of wild boar or the carrying capacity of the forests, with any peer reviewed methodology.” The activist further avers that there is a series of correspondence between the centre and the state and despite repeated requests for data the state has shown no research or data on the subject of wild boar declared vermin.