M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Feb 23: The recent elephant killing spree in Jharkhand, which lasted for an average of one day, with five killed in Lohardaga, four in Itki, three in Hazaribag and one in Latehar, has prompted calls for the establishment of an Elephant Camp in Jharkhand.
Kumar Ashish, Deputy Director South division of the Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) said, “Elephant Camps in states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and many more are proving immensely beneficial in a situation where elephants get into killing humans.”
Notably, Elephant Camp is a place to keep stressed, aggressive or changing elephants in captivity and under supervision where elephants re-learn how to adapt to the wildlife.
Ashish further added that such an elephant is first isolated from the herd, or if the elephant itself has become a loner, then it is to be contained.
Jharkhand is an elephant-bearing state with 200 elephants in its 1,100 sq km space of the Palamu Tiger Reserve, however, this schedule 1 wildlife from Chatra, Hazaribag, Ramgarh, Koderma to Dalma is in very large numbers, the absence of Elephant Camps reflects the issue of elephant-human conflict in the state.
DFO Lohardaga Arvind Kumar speaking to lagatar24.com said, “When five people including three women were killed by the lone tusker in Lohardaga, we decided to tranquillise the tusker. But, with no elephant rescue or rehabilitation centres statewide, we had to abandon the idea.”
Jharkhand needs Elephant Camps that can handle such cases of elephants more efficiently than lose nerves when elephants use their feet to kill humans.
As per the information, in 2017, Jharkhand had to shoot down one of its elephants in Sahibganj, which had killed more than a dozen people, including a man from Bihar.
Later, Hyderabad-based man-animal conflict expert Nawab Shafath Ali Khan killed an interstate ‘walking terror’ on the order of the then Chief Wildlife Warden Jharkhand Lal Ratnakar Singh.
