BENGALURU: Tall claims of experts and forest department officials that rail barricades will help control the man-elephant menace have now been busted.In the last one week, elephants in three different locations of Nagarhole Tiger Reserve (NTR) have crashed through and uprooted rail barricades to make their way into nearby villages, forcing the forest department to look at other ways to control the conflict and even re-think whether rail barricades are ideal in mitigating the elephant menace.
The latest incident was reported on Friday at Veeranahosahalli range, where a tusker broke the rails. The earlier two incidents were from Kollavige and Mudugunur villages. “Normally, we used to see elephants squeezing their way through or climbing over the rails. But now they have broken the barricades and entered the villages, destroying crops and properties. Elephants have managed to identify weak spots in the rails and bumped into them repeatedly to break out,” NTR Director D Mahesh Kumar told TNIE.
Now as a trial, NTR is electrifying the rail barricade with solar power on a 7 km stretch at Antharsanthe and DB Kuppe to see whether it is effective. The latest incidents have forced the forest department to keep its plan on hold to erect rails at forest patches, including Bhadra and Kali tiger reserves. The officials will also inspect the already erected rails.
“The rails were introduced 8-9 years ago and so far, their condition has not been assessed. In some places, they have corroded and in others, they are bent because of the force used by elephants. In some other spots, elephants have widened the gap between two barricades and made their way,” said a senior forest official.
Till now, all the methods employed by forest officials to control the movement of elephants have been futile. They have tried elephant-proof trenches, chilli fences, solar fencing (horizontal, hanging and double tentacled) and alarm system. “Elephants have outsmarted everything. This proves that elephant corridors need to be strengthened to ensure conflicts are reduced,” said an expert.