Indian border force dismantles electric fence on Nepal side

Apr 28, 2018-The Indian Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has uprooted the electric fence installed at Punarbas, a village in Kanchanpur that shares border with India. Sharada Bista, the deputy mayor of Punarabas Municipality, said the SSB men on Wednesday entered the Nepali territory and dismantled the fence that was installed to keep off wild elephants from entering the border settlements.

Wild elephants from Dudhuwa National Park in India have long been troubling the people living along the border in the district. Keshav Prasad Timilsina, a Punarbas local, said they had recently completed installing the fence.

Superintendent of Police Dilliraj Bista said the fence installation work has been stopped for the time being as the district authority is planning to conduct a border survey from a joint team of the two countries to settle the long-standing territory dispute at Punarbas.

Last year, a man from Punarbas-8 had died when the Indian border security force opened fire at the villagers over a dispute of culvert construction close to the border.



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Wild elephant menace in Kanchanpur village

Wild elephants straying from the Shuklaphanta National Park are wrecking havoc in the adjacent villages, said the locals.

Recently on Thursday night, a herd of the tuskers entered the settlement of Pipaladi in Shuklaphanta municipality-3, and destroyed houses of the locals and ripen wheat crops on around 31 bighas of farmland, said they said. The loss estimation is around Rs 1.5 million.

A week ago, the pachyderms demolished at least 21 human huts set up in the Park area, said a local
Chuluwa Chaudhary, adding that the locals, in some cases, are forced to spend sleepless nights due to fear of elephant attacks.

In a bid to ward off the wild animals, the locals have come up with traditional means like whistle-blowing but with little effects.

When asked, Narendra Prasad Chaudhary, mayor of the municipality, said fencing the village with electric barbed wires has started to prevent wild elephants from entering the settlements.

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Farmers quiver as tuskers wreck crops and property

Mar 5, 2018-A herd of wild elephants has been wreaking havoc at Punarbas Municipality in Kanchanpur district near the Indian border for the past one week.

The marauding wild tuskers destroyed 38 houses and damaged crops in fields located in Punarbas Municipality. The local people are in panic due to the elephant menace in the area. “There was reign of terror when a herd of elephants entered the settlement in Punarbas-9  around 10pm on Saturday and wreaked havoc for three hours. Wheat planted in about five bighas of land was completely destroyed,” said Keshav Prasad Timilsina, a local who is also the chairman of ‘elephant victim struggle committee’.

The farmers are very worried now as the elephants damage wheat crop that is ready for harvest.

Elephant menace is a recurring problem in Punarbas area every year. The tuskers from Dudhuwa National Park in India and Shuklaphanta National Park (SNP) enter the settlements and cause havoc.
The local people, especially the farmers and owner of non-concrete houses, have been greatly affected due to the problem.

Similarly, wards No 3, 5 of Punarbas that abut with the SNP are also affected. The tuskers from the park enter the settlement and damage the corps.

“Thirty-eight non-concrete houses were completely destroyed in the municipality in the past few days. Wheat and sugarcane planted in more than 25 bighas of land were also damaged,” said Mayor Dil Bahadur Air. He said that Nepal Red Cross district chapter and Jhali branch provided tarpaulins and kitchen utensils to the victims. The municipality said it provided Rs 2,000 to each family whose crops were destroyed by the tuskers.  

Electric fence was set up in Punarbas area with the help of the District Forest Office, National Trust for Nature Conservation, the SNP and Tarai Arch Landscape Programme. The locals complained that the electric fence was damaged in some places and they are not repaired so far. “The tuskers entered from those places and run amok,” said Timilsina. 

Mayor Air said that the municipality has allocated Rs 1.5 million budget this year to install and repair electric fence in the affected areas. “We will soon install the fence with the support of other agencies,” he added.

The mayor said the municipality is planning to install halogen lights to control the entry of the tuskers for the time being.

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Tuskers kill 2, terror among locals

Locals of Pathari and areas of Kanchanrup Municipality are living in fear after 2 women were killed in a tusker attack on Tuesday afternoon. The elephants had strayed into the human settlement from Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve.

Manju Devi Sah, 35 and Durgi Devi Mukhiya, 45, of Pathari were killed when the wild beast attacked them while they were collecting fodder. “The villagers are living in constant fear of wild elephants that stray into human settlements from Koshi Tappu time and again,” said Hari Mukhiya, a local.

“As many as 6 persons were killed in the attacks last year while 49 houses and crops cultivated in more than 100 bigha have been destroyed by wild elephants in the past 6 months,” said Ram Krishna Yadav, another local.

Elephant Victims Struggle Committee Coordinator Bachchalal Mandal said the authority had decided to erect electric fences around the conservation area to prevent the protected animals.

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Wild elephants run amok in the East

Feb 16, 2018-Wild elephant menace in eastern Nepal has risen in recent times. Six persons have died after being attacked by the elephants from the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve in the running fiscal year, according to the reserve officials.

Chief conservation officer Shyam Kumar Sah said the number of elephant-caused human deaths in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, from mid-July 2017 onwards, accounts for nearly 50 percent of the fatalities recorded since 2008. 
Manju Devi Sah, 35, and Durgi Devi Mukhiya, 45, of Kanchanarup Municipality-5, Saptari, became the latest casualties on Tuesday--the first ever inside the reserve’s territory. 

“The two women were killed 2km inside the western post of the reserve. They had entered the forest to collect firewood,”said Shyam Kumar.  Between 2008 and the first half of 2017, the reserve recorded nine cases of human deaths in elephant attacks. 
Six deaths in the past seven months, from July 2017 till February 2018, is a clear indicator that the incidents of human-elephant conflict have gone up significantly. The reserve officials attribute this to the increased human activities near the protected area.  

“We have been discouraging locals from venturing inside the reserve to collect firewood and fodder, but our advice has gone unheeded,” said Shyam Kumar.  The reserve is spread across 176 sq km covering the districts of Sunsari, Saptari and Udayapur. The cases of human-elephant conflict are high in Saptari. 

Wild tuskers have been wreaking destruction in Odraha, Portaha, Bhardaha, Bairawa, Kankalini Hanumannagar, Fattepur, Rupnagar, Dharampur, Jagatpur and Mahuli villages of Saptari for years now.

Fences built at different places to stop elephants from entering human settlements has not made much of a difference. The reserve officials say most elephants stray inside human settlements in search of food. 

“With the rise in human population, we have settlements expanding everywhere. Forest and vegetation covers are rapidly shrinking, causing elephants and other wildlife to enter human settlements in search of food,” said Shyam Kumar.


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Elephant behind six deaths gets radio collar

GULARIYA:  The Bardiya National Park (BNP) has installed a radio collar to a marauding wild elephant in a bid to track its movement and prevent it from entering the human settlements.

The BNP team on Sunday fixed the GPS-equipped collar on the wild tusker named Jangali that killed six persons in Bardiya last year.

“The constant emission of radio signals from the device will enable us to track the animal’s movement. It helps to chase away the tusker immediately after it strays out of the park forest,” said acting Chief Conservation Officer Ashok Kumar Bhandari.

The BNP team darted the elephant as it entered Dakela village in the buffer zone of the BNP. Rangers from the BNP, officials from the National Trust of Nature Conservation and Nepal Army were involved in installing the radio collar. The pachyderm was later released in the BNP forest.

The BNP administration are planning to install the radio collar on another wild elephant believed to have entered the human settlements. The wild elephants from the BNP and Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary of India had entered the settlements in Thakurbaba and Barbardiya municipalities and wreaked havoc a month ago. They destroyed more than two dozen houses and damaged wheat planted in hectares of land in the area.

Local people complain that the authorities concerned paid no heed to their repeated requests for stopping the recurring menace of wild animals. They have been demanding that an electric fence be installed to prevent the wild elephants from entering the settlements.

As per the data available at the BNP, 36 people were killed by wild elephants in Bardiya district in the past 18 years.

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Forest path being constructed for stopping elephant menace

BANIYANI, JHAPA — Construction of footpath has started in the forest areas around Bhadrapur Municipality in Jhapa district in a bid to controlling the wild elephant menace.

The forest trail is being constructed in the forest at Ward Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the municipality, said Kajiman Rai, the chief administrative officer of the Municipality. The municipality has allocated Rs 5.5 million for the construction of the forest path in the fiscal year 2017/18.

Mayor Jeevan Kumar Shrestha said attractive and safe trail is being constructed linking the community forests at various municipality wards also keeping in mind the possibility of tourism development.

Works on construction of the forest path have been started from Dasrathpur community forest at Ward No. 1 of the municipality. Mayor Shrestha said the path would be constructed in such a way that there would be no risk of wild elephants as wire fence would be constructed on both sides of the road to prevent their entry.

The forest path will connect the municipality wards from Ward No. 1 to 4.

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Nepal develops new fencing to protect farms and elephants

An electric fence has been developed in Napal to stop elephants from raiding people’s crops and houses.

 However, it will allow other wildlife, people and cattle to pass through unhindered.

The Himalayan Tiger Foundation is working with the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), WWF-Nepal and the authorities of Bardiya National Park will test a new approach for keeping elephants and people separated.

Together with scientists from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands they have developed an experimental electric fence.

It uses a single live wire, instead of multiple wires, at a height of 180 cm that allows people and cattle, but also deer, tigers, and rhinos to walk underneath it.

The idea is to stop the much taller elephants from going through but not other wildlife.

Hopefully it also prevents people from cutting fences because they can pass through unhindered.

It’s an excellent idea.

Whether it will work will largely depend on how well the scientists understand elephants and even more importantly how well they understand communities.

Fences only work where communities support and maintain them.

Getting this support is not easy.

Co-financing schemes appear necessary to create the required sense of ownership from communities.

Human-elephant encounters are costly to the community. A recent study showed that the total yearly elephant damage in the 5,000 ha project area is about US$ 35,000 – 50,000 in crop losses and damage to houses.

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