THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The forest department, headquartered at Thiruvananthapuram, has cut a sorry figure as it does not have a gun to tranquillise any wild animal that strays into human habitation. They have only a gun at Periyar Tiger Reserve in Thekkady. The forest department took a gun, ‘Dan Inject’ on a loan basis from the city zoo to dart the wild gaur which strayed into human habitation at Kazhakkoottam on Wednesday.
On Wednesday morning, the forest authorities approached the Thiruvananthapuram Zoo officials seeking their Denmark-made ‘Dan Inject’ to dart the five-year-old male wild gaur. A top zoo official confirmed to TNIE that their gun has 75-m range which has the capacity of 5 ml, 10 ml and 15 ml darting.
“The forest department officials told us that their gun is an old model where its efficiency is not up to the mark. So we gave one among the two guns we have to the forest department team involved in the darting of the wild gaur,” said a top zoo official.
However, a senior forest official said that they don’t have a gun in the three ranges Kulathupuzha, Palode and Paruthipally under the Thiruvananthapuram forest division.
“The forest department has got a gun only at Periyar Tiger Reserve in Thekkady. The wild gaur was spotted in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday morning giving us little time and there was no option but to take it from the city zoo”, said a senior forest official.
Meanwhile, the mystery regarding the presence of a wild gaur in a human habitation has caught the forest officials unawares. Forest officials told TNIE that since the nearest forest is 30 km away at Palode forest range, it is a mystery how a large herbivore which weighs more than 800 kg strayed into a human settlement from that far.