IDUKKI: Call it the quest for survival. Deforestation and climate change have severely depleted elephant habitats forcing the creatures to foray into human habitations. The resultant loss of lives has left the Forest Department officers and those living near the woods on tenterhooks.
Stung by the rising human casualties on the forest fringes, Principal Chief Forest Conservator G Harikumar has ordered the capture of two rogue pachyderms -- one from Agali in Palakkad and the other from Aralam in Kannur -- which killed as many as 11 people.
The Chief Wildlife Warden has also ordered translocating them to the Forest Department’s Abhayaranyam elephant training centre at Kodanad in Ernakulam.
Express had published a report on March 6 about the unprecedented spike in human-animal conflict. Forest Department statistics reveal 94 people were killed by wild elephants in the state in the past seven years. Last year, 13 were killed by rogue elephants in Agali and Aralam.
In the Agali Forest Range, a 16-year-old elephant killed as many as seven people last year, a senior Forest officer told Express. “A 20-year-old ‘chullikomban’ (short-tusked elephant) has killed four in Aralam in the past four months,” he said.
People living on the edge of these forest areas have been pressuring the department to capture and translocate the animals to safer places.
A few months ago, the department captured a wild elephant, Bharatan SI, spreading terror among villagers in Kallur and Muthanga in Wayanad.
But the attempt to translocate the jumbo to the Parambikulam Reserve Forest was stalled following protests from people living near the sanctuary and a section of officers. The elephant is still languishing in the confines of the kraal in Wayanad.
Meanwhile, efforts to capture the two rogue elephants is on with the help of ‘kumki’ jumbos. As part of the operation, the pachyderms will be tranquilised first and then pulled into the kraal with the help of the ‘kumkis’.
Though the order says the captured elephants should be immediately shifted to Kodanad, experts say it will take time. The reason? Vets are against shifting the sedated animals to a place hundreds of kilometres away from their original habitat.
The government has paid Rs 15.07 crore as compensation for crop damage caused by marauding elephants and Rs 1.12 crore as ex-gratia to the families of the victims during the past seven years.
While 20 elephants were killed by poachers during the same period, at least thrice the number have been killed as a result of rising man-animal conflicts. Two pachyderms were poisoned to death, 18 were electrocuted, three were killed by trains and 37 died of unnatural reasons.