Mangaluru: The frequent elephant attacks and human-elephant confrontation is increasing in the Dakshina Kannada District. Another case of wild elephant attack has been reported in Kadaba Taluk of Dakshina Kannada District on May 28. A villager Vijukumar of Kadaba Town has been severely injured in the incident. In another recent case, two persons were mauled to death by an elephant in Renjiladi in the Puttur-Subrahmanya range in March.
As a result of frequent human-animal confrontation people going on religious tourism are now weighing their options. Though there have been no reports of elephants attacking vehicles so far, that eventuality cannot be totally ruled out say the people in Kadaba. “We have reports that there are two individual wild elephants probably separated from the herd that had moved on to the Kerala side of the elephant migration corridor,” said a Gram Panchayat member.
This range was not known for wild elephants attacks in the last five years, but in recent times wild elephant sightings and attacks have become frequent, is this a result of a change of habitat or a change in migration route is now being debated by the wildlife experts and Forest Department officials.
According to an estimation, there are 42 elephants distributed into 3 different herds that travel between Alur in Hassan District through Brahmagiri to Kerala’s elephant habitat sites. They stay there for the monsoons and return to habitat sites in Karnataka after the monsoons. Nekkilady, Renjilady, Kadaba, these ranges had not many sightings in the past but in the last five years sightings are more and also attacks have become frequent.
There are six districts in three different forest areas in the state that have elephant-human confrontations on a regular basis. Hassan, Chikkmagaluru, Dakshina Kannada, Shivamogga, Mysuru and Kodagu have been reporting regular confrontations, The Government had also created an Elephant Task Force to study and control the animal-human confrontations. They are equipped to tranquillise the rogue elephants and manpower trained to handle elephant menace in human habitations. But unfortunately, nobody can predict when a human will be attacked by elephants. However, forest officials state that the southern parts of the state have three elephant migration paths in the four districts when elephants in big herds move from one place to another in search of food and mates.
There are two corridors spaced out in two regions Chamarajanagara, Mysuru, Ramanagara and another in Hassan, Kodagu and Chikkmagaluru, corridors will have to be created among the traditional migration route of the animals in these two regions, they will not budge from their traditional path the forest officials and experts have tried in vain since 2008 to create a route map. In the case of the migration path between Brahmagiri and Pushpagiri had no problems, but those in Chamarajanagara, Mysuru, Sakleshpura and Ramanagara will be problematic as the traditional migration routes have grown into human habitations and commercial estates an official from the Forest Department told Verito.today.
Would there be a translocation? When asked the officials said not at the moment, we do have a report that there were 42 individual elephants too many in these areas but translocation was a huge operation and may need legal clearance. There was a fine report made by the Elephant Task Force submitted by an erudite panel of experts to the High Court of Karnataka in 2012 which has made several observations which will be taken into consideration when creating corridors he said. Our endeavour will be to restore the traditional elephant migration path without disturbing human activities but to make sure that human-elephant conflict becomes a thing of the past.