5 killed by elephants in Jharkhand

Ranchi: A herd of rampaging elephants have killed five people in the last one week in Jharkhand's Pakur, Jamtara and Dumka districts, forest officials said on Tuesday.

The fifth person was trampled to death late on Monday in Pakur by the herd that has 22 elephants.

According to forest department officials, Amanuwal Hembrom, 30, a resident of Khhassa village was one of the members in a group that had been trying to chase the elephants away.

A mob on Tuesday blocked the national highway in Pakur demanding action and compensation.

The herd has been rampaging through the Santhal Pargana region.

They had first entered Jamtara district and trampled three people to death on different days. Later the herd entered Dumka where one person was trampled to death.

The herd also includes baby elephants, who have wrecked havoc -- standing crops and houses have been damaged by the herd, a forest official said.

In Jharkhand more than 700 people have been killed by elephant herds since the states creation in 2000.

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Elephants are getting choked, electrocuted, and even bombed to death in India

India’s escalating man-animal conflict is leaving its elephants with no safe home.

A recent heart-wrenching incident inside Karnataka’s Nagarhole National Park in southern India captures the gravity of the situation. On Dec. 15, a 42-year-old elephant suffocated to death after getting stuck in a seven feet high iron fence. Ironically, the fence was set up by forest authorities to protect the creatures by preventing them from straying into human settlements.

The elephant reportedly managed to cross over and raided a nearby agricultural field, after which it was chased away by villagers. But when it tried to climb over to return to the forest, it was trapped in the fence. “The diaphragm of the elephant got compressed very heavily due to the pressure that fell on it and because of that the choking of the respiratory organs occurred,” KM Narayanaswamy, conservator of forests and director of Nagarahole National Park, told The News Minute website.

The brutal death has sparked heavy criticism from activists who have raised concerns before about the risks of using such fences to keep wildlife away from human settlements.

But these fences are a part of the forest department’s strategy to minimise human-elephant conflict, which has increased as settlements close in on the latter’s diminishing natural habitat and traditional elephant corridors. In several Indian states, elephants straying onto farmland have destroyed crops, prompting the ire of villagers, who rarely receive enough compensation for their losses. They often respond by chasing away elephants with weapons and even fireballs, an approach recently outlawed by the supreme court of India.

India is home to about 60% of the world’s Asian elephants. But data from the environment ministry has shown that on average at least 80 elephants are killed annually by electrocution, poaching, train accidents, and poisoning. India’s 2017 elephant census revealed that since 2012 their population has declined by 10% to 27,312.

The Nagarhole incident is only the latest example this year of the tragic consequences of human-wildlife conflict, coming just a few days after the gruesome death of an eight-year-old elephant who had chewed a bomb left by poachers in Odisha. In October, a pachyderm known as “Rowdy Ranga” was mowed down by a speeding bus in Nagarhole, and a few weeks later, in Odisha again, seven elephants were electrocuted by a low-hanging power line.

Between April and mid-December, 65 elephants were killed in Odisha alone, most of them due to human interventions such as power lines, oncoming trains, and the construction of wells, tanks, and drains, which elephants have fallen into.

The only solution, conservationists say, is to restore elephant corridors and reduce the risk of the animals falling prey to humans. But little has happened on that front.

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Odisha: 120 elephants rampage through Mayurbhanj district; destroy houses, crops; Watch Video

In Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, over 120 elephants entered and rampaged villages in Rasgovindpur Forest.
In Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, over 120 elephants entered and rampaged villages in Rasgovindpur Forest. According to an ANI report, the elephants, divided into three or four herds entered from the borders of West Bengal and Jharkhand.

The herd has rampaged through several villages and hundreds of acres of paddy fields.

A local told ANI, “a herd of 120 elephants entered Mayurbhanj district from Jharkhand. The elephants have just not destroyed the agricultural fields, but also homes in many villages that came in their way.” The person has alleged the local Forest Department for not taking proper action and not being active enough. “The department has deployed three men to shoo away the elephants, which is not possible. The higher officials are controlling everything through their phones, while the villagers are perishing,” he added.

To save their crops and homes, villagers often take it on themselves to shoo away the mammals. Many a time, they have often protested against the Forest department, but they have not yet taken any action, the news agency reported.

Earlier this year also, a herd of elephants destroyed a number of houses in the same district of Odisha. Later, another man was killed by an elephant in the Dhenkanal district of the state – which was followed by demonstrations against the Forest department.

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Elephant killed while crossing railway line fence in India

Description

The Railway Fencing near Village Bharathawadi.Veeranahosalli Range from Nagarahole National
Park has killed one Innocent huge Wild Tusker.

He died while trying to jump over the Fence to get into forest village. Elephants are wide Ranging Animals..

He Died with Heay Pain.. Unable to Balance his Body Weight... May be Internal Organs Ruptured.

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IIT-D-built sensor could prevent elephant deaths on railway tracks

Elephant deaths on railway tracks may be averted when a sensor built by a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) is put to test. If all goes well, it may be installed along the tracks frequented by elephants and prevent their cruel deaths.

"The sensors are yet to be installed. This was to be tested in the monsoon season. Since this monsoon has passed, we are waiting for the 2019 season. Our system is functional. We have tested in a similar setting but not at the site. We have earmarked the Rajaji National Park as the test deployment site. It is the ideal place, kind of a controlled environment and good for experiments. It's where trains are known to travel at the correct speed," Subrat Kar, a professor at the department of electrical engineering at IIT-Delhi, told IANS.

According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, in last five years alone India has lost near 100 elephants in train-related accidents. Moving at a slow pace, complete with their calves, they fail to respond fast enough to avoid a train hurtling towards them. In 2018, 26 elephants have so far succumbed to such collisions, the most recent being in Odisha's Keonjhar where an elephant was killed after being hit by a goods train.

Kar has been working on building a sensor device for close to a decade now in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun and funded by the Railways and Department of Science and Technology. Though there has been a buzz around the apparatus for years, it is only now slated to be tested in real conditions.

So far Kar has tested the sensor only inside the IIT-Delhi campus and the results have been "satisfactory".

The sensor detects from a distance the movement of elephants through a number of in-built devices. Once it detects the movement of the elephants, it sends a radio signal to the nearest station, which conveys the message to the driver to either stop or slow down the train.

"We will install sensors at sensitive spots, and not everywhere. There are known paths along which the elephants move, so we install sensors on these paths, which detect them through bodyrays, cameras and vibration. Then we convey the information to the nearest station and from there we convey the information to the train driver.

"In the engine there's a box that signals the engine to stop. If this warning is given to the driver at least three kilometres before the train reaches the spot where elephants are expected to come in their way, he applies the breaks and slowly comes to a halt," Kar explained.

"The success of this preventive measure depends on detecting the elephants much before the train is there. Three kilometres before roughly translates to 3-4 minutes before," he added.

The various sensors in the device corroborate whether the moving animals are indeed elephants and not any other, like a tiger, which can cross the track without needing the train to be slowed down.

"A vibration detector, capturing heat rays coming from the animals, a camera to recognise the animals, and lasers -- the sensor has these all. So we have several sensors to detect the presence of animals. We use one sensor to check the outcome of the other sensor to corroborate the result... We have our own radio network with the sensors," Kar said.

Although Kar has been working on the device since 2008, things picked up pace only in 2014 when the Railways came up with Rs 30 lakh in funding.

On its part, the Railways have employed a variety of methods to keep the elephant deaths in check.

"Various measures have been adopted, jointly by the Railways and the forest department, to prevent elephant deaths on the tracks. These include signage on the tracks to pre-warn train drivers, speed restrictions in elephant corridors and deputing forest officials in the control room," a senior Railways official told IANS.

"All these measures are adopted at locations jointly identified by the forest department and railways in Assam, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Kerala and Odisha," the official added.

(Vishal Narayan can be contacted at vishal.n@ians.in )

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