PALAKKAD: In view of the increasing incidents of man-animal conflict in the Malampuzha assembly constituency, local MLA and chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission V S Achuthanandan has called a meeting of the officials of the Forest Department and the elected representatives from the constituency in Thiruvananthapuram on June 3 to chalk out ways to curb the menace.
The meeting will be held in the presence of Forest Minister K Raju. Recently, a Forest watcher Mohanan of Kanjikode was killed while he was chasing away a wild elephant with crackers. The elephant turned around and stomped him to death.
On May 10, another watcher was injured while chasing away two wild elephants from a human settlement in Arangottukulambu in the Malampuzha Assembly constituency. The veterinary doctors who accompanied the watchers found one of the wild tuskers was in musth and hoped it would return to the forest soon.
Suggestions: One of the main suggestions from elephant lovers is to plant bamboo saplings inside the forests by the personnel of the Forest Department for the elephants. The reserve forests in Malampuzha are mainly teak plantations while in Nelliampathy has mostly tea estates.
There are bamboo saplings only in the Walayar forest range and in the Kovai Kutralam area. It is the lack of food which drives the wild elephants to human habitats. The elephant path of the herds extends from Malampuzha to Walayar and then to Poondi in Tamil Nadu from where the Nilgiri Biosphere begins.