TIRUNELVELI/COIMBATORE: The Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) administration shared the contents of the postmortem report of the 30-year-old male elephant ‘Radhakrishnan’ on Thursday and confirmed that the animal died of multiple skull fractures after falling 15 feet off a slippery rock in Upper Kothayar of Manjolai Hills.
KMTR deputy director-cum-wildlife warden LS Srikanth said the carcass was found in a head-down position on a tar road below a 20-foot-deep roadside cut.
Above it is an eight-metre-long gentle slope with a huge rock at its upper end and a medium-sized movable stone near the edge. He said the footprints indicated that the animal had stepped on the huge rock, and as its right forelimb slipped, it inadvertently stepped on the movable stone with its left forelimb, completely losing its footing and falling 15 feet onto its right on the tar surface.
“The absence of struggle or paddling marks suggests an instantaneous death,” he said. The report mentioned that the death was due to multiple compound skull fractures, severe trauma, and extensive haemorrhage resulting from a fall from height, leading to sudden collapse.
Scientific study of terrain
On November 19, 2023, a makhna elephant, captured from Dharmapuri and translocated to Chinna Kallar in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, had met with the same fate. It died after a fall off a slope in Chinna Kallar. A Coimbatore-based activist said, “Like Radhakrishnan, the makhna was also radio-collared, but the department could not monitor it properly.
These deaths indicate that more scientific study of the terrain of the release location needs to be conducted well before the translocation. The department, right now, is simply choosing a region far from human habitations and relocating the so-called problematic elephants. In most cases, translocated elephants get disoriented at the new locations due to the unfamiliar terrain and other factors.”