BENGALURU: The gentle giants of the forest are fast becoming smarter as they figure out all the different ways man has devised to keep them out of villages and farmlands. While this may sound like just another fact of life for you, for Karnataka Forest Department, this ends up posing a greater and greater challenge as it is being forced to come up newer and newer methods to deter the elephant hordes from destroying habitations and crops.
This year, the department has decided to mix technology with some plain old ingenuity.
The first place of action is the Bannerghatta National Park (BNP) near Bengaluru, hemmed in by the urban jungle on one side, and villages and agricultural lands on the other.
Befitting India's technology capital, solution here too is equally hi-tech, involving sensors buried in the ground. Prabhakar Priyadarshi, director BNP said the sensors are being installed in Harrohalli range, inside the forest patch.
"They have been calibrated in accordance to the elephant’s weight. So when an elephant will step on one of the sensors just before the forest boundary, an alarm will go off and the forest officials will rush to drive the elephants back to the forest."
“We are also installing solar smart sensor watch mechanism, where the staffs will get alerts on their mobile phones, once the solar line shave snapped. Even though solar fencing has been done in many locations across the state, the staffs usually get to know of the damaged wires the next day only," he explained.
"Elephants damage the lines at night when the power supply is less. But now sensors are being installed in such a manner that they will send an alert as soon as the line snaps. This is being installed in all the four ranges of BNP. Each sensor will cover an area of one and half kilometres,” Priyadarshi added.
On the other hand, in Bandipur Tiger Reserve (BTR), the department will resort to a natural epiculture method, which was tried in Kodagu and was successful for a while, until the elephants outsmarted it.
“We are giving honey bee boxes to the families of the locals and tribals staying on the fringes of the forests. They will rear honey bees on the forest boundary, this will not just help them get honey, but will also keep elephants at bay,” said BTR director Ramesh Kumar P.
In Madikeri and Hassan regions, forest officials are using a combination of several methods like elephant proof trench, rail barricades and solar fencing along with alerting systems like CCTV cameras, SMS, LED screens and even making calls. They assess the progress and failure of each method and interchange it.
Principal Chief Wildlife Conservator of Forests, Subhash Malkhade said: “We are trying all methods, out of the box ideas are all welcome. If any division has a unique idea, they are welcome implement it.”