Two elephants found dead

Two elephants found dead
Newindpress.com
October 13 2006

BHUBANESWAR: Two elephants were found dead in a paddy field in Lahanda under Keonjhar district’s Joda police limits on Thursday.

The pachyderms, both juvenile females, are believed to have been poisoned.

There was no sign of any external injury nor was there any electricity supply line in the vicinity to suggest that the two could have been electrocuted, sources in the department said.

The place where the carcasses of the two elephants were found was only a kilometre from Lahanda under Champua Forest Range. Forest officials have rushed to the spot to take stock of the situation. It was yet to be ascertained if the elephants were killed for their tush.

Only four days back, an adult elephant was found killed in Similipal Tiger Reserve. Three forest officials had been placed under suspension over it.

In the past few years, North Orissa, Keonjhar to be particular, has proved to be vulnerable for the elephants. Interestingly, it is Keonjhar through which the elephants have a migrating corridor to Jharkhand and West Bengal.

The Keonjhar Division has over 100 elephants but retaliatory killing rather than poaching has become an issue of concern. The two most practised form of retaliatory killing are electrocution and poisoning.

During the span ranging from 1990-91 to 2003-04, as many as 188 elephants have been poached in Orissa while another 100 have died in accidents.

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