Ten jumbos from Karnataka to help conservation at UP’s Dudhwa

New Delhi: With a new rhino area to monitor and rising man-animal conflict to control, Uttar Pradesh’s Dudhwa National Park will get ten elephants from Karnataka to deal with the situation.

According to a recent report, over 156 people were killed or injured between 2000 and 2013 due to man-animal conflict in the Dudhwa-Pilibhit area. With big cats frequently venturing out or around the buffer area which is full of villages, the forest department needed more elephants.

Situated next to the porous Indo-Nepal border, Dudhwa also has a new rhino rehabilitation centre where four rhinos were relocated. The forest department requires two elephant units for better monitoring of the new rhino area spread over 21 sq km.

The elephants will join 13 elephants already stationed at Dudhwa for patrolling and monitoring. They will cover about 2,500 km in a convoy of trucks carrying elephants and food under the supervision of vets and foresters, officials said.

“Basically the primary function is patrolling along the Indo-Nepal border where foot and jeep patrolling is next to impossible… apart from that some elephants will be shifted to buffer area where man-animal conflict is high,” Dudhwa National Park Director Sunil Choudhary said.

Choudhary and his deputy Mahaveer Kaujalagi said that keeping the warm weather in mind, they are avoiding travel during the day time.

The transfer is a goodwill gesture from the Karnataka Forest Department that had earlier this year also sent elephants to Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal.

“There are over 105 elephants in eight different camps. This is the first time Karnataka is giving elephants to other states strictly to aid the states with their conservation plans,” Karnataka Forest Department Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Jayaram said.

Able to venture deep into the forests, elephants are the key for better monitoring in order to check wildlife crime, according to Dudhwa Deputy Director Mahaveer Kaujalagi.

Earlier this year, Dudhwa received its first sniffer dog.

“The new rhino area needs active monitoring and man-animal conflict has to be mitigated, all this increased pressure on the existing elephant units here. Ten more of these will help us conserve in a better manner,” said Kaujalagi.

Home to a highly diverse ecosystem at the heart of the Terai region bordering Nepal, Dudhwa has several endangered animals, including tigers, elephants, Indian rhino, leopard, barasingha (swamp deer), sloth bear and others.

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Jumbo menace rattles villagers near India-Nepal border

Residents of at least half a dozen villages in Champawat’s Tanakpur are spending sleepless night due to marauding herd of wild elephants in the region that forage through standing crop and fruit orchards. Villagers say that they are forced to stay awake at night to drive away the wild herds to save their crops and dwellings. Over the last one year, residents of villages in the region, including Thwalkhera, Khetkhera, Gaindakhali, Naya Goth, Kakrali gate, Uchauligoth and Bastia lived in fear of a tiger that was reported to roaming the region surrounded by dense forest on one side and the other by the India-Nepal border. Four women from the Kakrali gate, Thawalkhera, Naya Goth and Bastia were allegedly mauled to death by the big cats in less than a year while collecting fodder and firewood in the forest, villagers say. This apart, villagers have lost a number of livestock that fell prey to the big cats, some of them say. Following the increase in the incidents of man-animal conflicts in the region, forest officials placed cages and camera traps to catch the big cats in Sharda and Boom range but have failed to capture the tiger, villagers say, and add that forest officials do not respond to their desperate calls for help. Satish pandey, a villager, says, “Whenever we inform the forest officials, they don’t turn up in time to chase the elephant herds so we ourselves, have to ward off the animals by beating drums and utensils or bursting crackers.” “The forest watch and ward staff do not patrol region.” Tanakpur sub divisional officer Rajesh Srivastva, however, says that the villages fall in the periphery of an elephant corridor, which starts from the Rajaji Tiger Reserve to the western parts of Nepal. “Movements of pachyderms along the villages that fall on the elephant corridor are considered quite common.” He, however, says that the elephants do not enter the villages in search of fodder as it is in abundance in the forest. “Elephants by nature migrate from one place to another are known to destroy whatever comes on the way as it is the behavioral instinct of elephants.”.

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