RANCHI: An elephant that entered a village in Bokaro searching for food died of suffocation after falling into a narrow well late on Thursday night.
According to locals, the elephant entered Talo village on Thursday night in search of crops to eat but fell into the well due to the darkness. The villagers discovered the elephant lying dead later in the night and informed forest officials, they said.
District Forest Officer (DFO) Rajneesh Kumar stated that the elephant was not with the herd and had wandered alone in the forest near the village.
“Exact reasons for its separation from the herd cannot be confirmed, but elephants have a tendency to remain in one place while one member, most likely the leader, ventures out to search for food,” said the DFO.
He added that if the parapet wall of the well had been a little higher, the elephant might not have fallen into it. The DFO said a crane was brought in to pull the elephant out of the well.
Notably, due to a lack of food in the forests, elephants often enter villages in search of sustenance and destroy standing crops in the fields.
According to officials, the dead elephant was the leader of a herd of 40 elephants and had entered the village ahead of the herd in search of food.
Data from the forest department shows that out of the 24 districts in Jharkhand, 20 have elephants. As a result, an average of 80 people are killed and over 150 are injured annually in man-elephant conflicts in the state.
Admitting that humans have encroached on elephant corridors, leading to an increase in man-elephant conflicts in recent years, the state government has launched an elephant tracking app. This app, which can be downloaded from the Play Store by searching "Jharkhand Elephant Tracker," provides updates on the location of elephants.
Notably, The New Indian Express was the first to report that Jharkhand forest officials were developing an app to regularly update people about elephant locations.
In addition to providing the exact location of elephants, the app helps villagers prepare to deal with the threat. An integrated alarm mechanism has also been introduced, sending alerts via SMS and WhatsApp as soon as an elephant enters within a 5 km radius of their villages.