BENGALURU: Forest, Environment and Ecology Minister Eshwar B Khandre on Thursday said the Karnataka forest department will hand over partially trained kumki (camp) elephants to Andhra Pradesh. That is not all, mahouts and kawadis will also be trained by their counterparts from Karnataka.
Khandre told the media that Andhra Pradesh has asked for eight kumki elephants, and Karnataka, which has 103 kumkis housed in various camps, will send them.
All help will be extended to set up elephant camps, and to capture, dart and transport captive wild elephants, besides measures for elephant management in Andhra Pradesh. Help will also be extended to train elephants. So far, Karnataka has handed at least 67 elephants to other states, including Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a detailed discussion he had with Andhra Pradesh Deputy CM and Forest and Environment Pawan Kalyan, and forest officials of both states. The two states discussed signing an MoU to mitigate conflict, promote eco-tourism, curtail poaching, especially of red sanders, and forest protection. The MoU will also help enter a formal agreement between the two states for tackling man-elephant conflict. The SOPs being drawn up for elephant capture in Karnataka will be extended to AP, he said.
Kalyan said the seven-point agenda in the MoU will include usage of IT in forest and conflict management and elephant tracking, transfer of knowledge and wildlife poaching.
At the meeting, Kalyan appreciated Karnataka’s forest officials and said they had admitted to have got Rs 140 crore from selling seized red sanders in 2017. Kalyan said: “Karnataka officials are willing to help the Andhra Pradesh forest department with best practices being followed in the state,” he said.