COIMBATORE: Wildlife activists fear that the loss of male pachyderms of critical age group to mishaps, especially on the railway tracks here, can pose a threat to the elephant sex ratio in the state, which has been gradually improving recently.
In the past two months, two tuskers were killed on the railway track near Walayar.
One more was electrocuted in one of the villages in Coimbatore. And all the three were viable breeding males, the activists said.
According to B Ramakrishnan, Field Officer of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), “The highly skewed elephant sex ratio is slowly recovering due to the strong anti-poaching measures of the government. Now, poaching has been contained, but other factors like accidents might worsen the sex ratio.
“The elephant population in South India is the best and it could be over 3,000 elephants in the state alone,” activists said and observed there is around two to three per cent increase in elephant population yearly.
Forest department sources said it is difficult to give exact sex ratio for the state, but it could be between 1:20 and 1:30. It is said the best sex ratio in elephant population is 1:5.
“In Coimbatore jurisdiction alone, as many as eight elephants died in the past two years,” observed K Kalidas, president of Osai, an NGO, speaking to Express here on Saturday.
“The Forest department and wildlife activists had been struggling hard to meet at least the existing sex ratio in the state, but now, the continuing death on the tracks would put a spoke in our efforts,” said Ramakrishnan.
And the implications will be adverse due to the huge gap in the sex ratio.