Wild elephant kills two in Haridwar, tranquilise-or-shoot orders issued
DEHRADUN: A wild elephant killed two people, including a woman in Haridwar district while it went on rampage in two villages, said forest officials .
Akash Verma, divisional forest officer (DFO) Haridwar said an elephant which was separated from its herd went on rampage on Saturday evening in two villagesPanjanheri and Jiapota-attacking people and vehicles.
Verma said the elephant went on rampage because of locals chasing it and its inability to find its way back to the forest due to tall sugarcane fields in the two villages where it had strayed. “The elephant first trampled a 35-year-old woman Babita at Jiapota village. She was rushed to the nearby hospital where she succumbed to her injuries late at night. Then this elephant attacked 60-year-old Surender Chauhan, in Panjanheri. Chauhan had gone to water his fields when he was attacked by the jumbo. He died on the spot,” he said. The death of two people miffed the locals who protested at the DFO office at Panjanheri, demanding that the elephant be eliminated as it could kill more people in future. Verma said given the volatile situation in the area, the chief wildlife warden gave permission to tranquilize the elephant and shoot it, if it enters the human habitation again and attacks people. “Seventy forest officials have been pressed into service to ensure the elephant doesn’t return to the villages. Police officials and locals are also helping the forest officials,” he said. Aggression of some elephants in Uttarakhand’s Corbett and Rajaji National Park landscape, two bastions of wild elephant in the state, is becoming a major concern for wildlife officials. A senior wildlife officer, on condition of anonymity said that if these aggressive elephants are not captured, they will either get killed in retaliatory action or kill more people. He said the best way out with these aggressive elephants, if their behaviour doesn’t change after capture, is to train them and use them for monitoring purposes in national parks. “This is also what the Standard Operating Procedure of the Project Elephant says. Otherwise such elephants will be danger to people and themselves. Over the last few years, three elephants have been already killed in retaliatory action, while one aggressive elephant had to be eliminated in 2014,” he said.
Ritesh Joshi, wildlife scientist who has studied elephants in Rajaji landscape for 12 years, said man elephant conflict was increasing due to rise in human population, tusker population, fragment of traditional elephant corridors and availability of easy food sources near fringe areas of forests.