COIMBATORE: Principal chief conservator of forest Syed Muzammil Abbas on Friday issued an order constituting a committee to investigate the circumstances leading to elephant deaths, especially of young ones, in the State in the last one year.
The committee will be headed by additional principal chief conservator of forest I Anwardeen and comprises IFS officers CH Padma, working plan officer, Vellore; JR Samartha, deputy conservator of forest; and K Kalidasan, president of Osai, a NGO based in Coimbatore. The committee will visit the site of occurrence of death and analyse factors such as population, human-animal conflict, electrocution, poaching, etc.
Members of the committee will convene a meeting with public living close to the site of death and field teams of forest department and draw an action plan to prevent unnatural deaths in future. Kalidasan told TNIE, “We have not been set a time frame to accomplish the task. Natural deaths would be studied by pocket, age group, spread of any diseases and whether it is breeding elephant etc. The population of elephants in the region will also be factored in the case of natural deaths. Unnatural death is caused many ways such as pouching, electrocution and trapping in swamps etc. We will start work immediately.”
According to sources, a meeting of high-level officials of forest department was held in Chennai recently to discuss the rising elephant deaths in Coimbatore division where it was proposed to set up a committee to probe the deaths. Officials, however, suggested that the scope of the investigation be extended across State and it was accepted. Seven elephants died in Coimbatore division in the last three months.
Meanwhile, a female elephant was found dead at Sirumugai Range in Coimbatore Division on Thursday. District Forest Officer TK Ashok Kumar, said the elephant could be around 10-years-old. Postmortem examination suggested that the animal died of a liver disease 5-7 days ago.