COIMBATORE: It’s that time of the year when elephants migrate to find food in the Valparai plateau. They usually rummage through the tea and coffee fields. But in recent years, they’ve been going straight for the ration shops, thanks to the abundance of rice, dal, and sugar there.
With the animals arriving in herds and damaging the shops in Valparai, under the Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR), officials at the reserve, along with wildlife researchers from the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), feel their usual conflict-mitigation strategies — using LED flashlights, sending SMSes about the movement of elephants, etc — aren’t enough. The only option ahead is immediately clearing the ration shops of their stock.
They’re now planning to hold a meeting with stakeholders, the civil supplies and revenue departments, and estate authorities, to suggest that ration-shop stock be cleared so elephants stop visiting. “We are planning to do this in one or two of the 48 shops in Valparai after meeting the stakeholders. All stakeholders must work together to devise a strategy as the forest department alone can’t tackle the problem,” said ATR deputy director MG Ganesan.
The elephants stay near the border of the Valparai plateau throughout the year, and have been targeting ration shops while migrating from Akkamalai and Kerala in search of food and water. They usually migrate between October and December.
‘Ration shops mustn’t be at ground level’
Ganesh Ragunathan, research affiliate of NCF Valparai, which has been doing research for over a decade on mitigating human-animal conflict in Valparai, said, “The rice, dal, etc. at ration shops should be given to beneficiaries immediately, or kept in a godown away from the animals. Otherwise, it would attract wild elephants, which would normally have to walk a few kilometres to find food.”
“The animals could again visit and damage the shops three or more times until they realise there’s no food for them there. We learnt this from our research at a ration shop at Injiparai Estate. As a long-term measure, we recommend that the district administration sets up ration shops in a building and at an elevation,” Ragunathan said. When contacted, district civil supply officer Sivakumari said, “We are ready to support the initiative, but it will only be done after consulting our staff to learn about the situation on the ground.”
Sources said people in Valparai regularly get messages about the movement of elephants in the region, and those who can’t read receive phone calls. “We are sending more than 1,200 messages every day to alert people on the movement of elephants,” said Ganesh Ragunathan.
