Night pests? This Indian city has elephants rooting through their plants!

A wild elephant created ripples of panic among the residents after it entered an urban residential area in southern India last night (November 29).

A video captured by one of the residents in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu state, shows the giants beast eating a decorative plant outside one of the houses at a private colony.

The elephants lifted the greenery from a vase and ate it on the spot. A few residents who spotted it raised an alarm and called forest officials for help.

The forest officials deployed a rescue team to take control of the situation. A forest official said such incidents are frequent these days as the natural habitats of the elephants are depleting due to massive deforestation, forcing them to enter into the human habitats in search of food.

The forest officials had a tough time in chasing them back to the forest without causing major damage.

The officials are taking measures to keep the wild tuskers away from the city, and have taken steps by installing camps to chase away any wild elephant if spotted near populated areas.

Please credit and share this article with others using this link:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/night-pests-indian-city-elephants-000000743.html

Freight Train Kills 4 Elephants in India, Including a Calf

NEW DELHI — A speeding freight train traveling through eastern India on Monday barreled into a herd of elephants as they were crossing railroad tracks, killing a calf and three adult animals, an official said.

The official, Biswajit Mohanty, a wildlife expert in Odisha State, where the accident occurred, said the train was traveling at 75 miles an hour in a protected stretch of forest near the village of Teladihi around 3:30 a.m. when it struck a bull elephant, two females and a calf. The speed limit there is around 20 miles an hour, he said by telephone.

“At such a high speed, there’s no chance the elephants would have survived,” Mr. Mohanty said, adding that he had called for an investigation. “This is a big violation.”

Hundreds of elephants have been killed in India over the past 20 years, and deaths attributed to trains appear to be on the rise.

As mining and development projects shrink the country’s forests, Indian wildlife experts say, elephants in search of food have been forced to wander farther from their natural habitats.


To read the full article, click on the story title.