Madikeri: The attempts of the Forest Department to capture two rogue elephants in the Banavara area of Kodagu have not succeeded because of lack of response from the Centre.

Permission was sought by the department here in December last to capture the two elephants that were wreaking havoc on the Banavara area.

Request sent

The department has not followed up the issue so far. The two identified elephants could have gone away from the spot. The requisition to catch the elephants were sent to the Centre through the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, but to no avail.

Conservator of Forests, Kodagu Circle, Prem Kumar, says the elephant menace is under control in the district, barring a few stray cases.

It assumes significance because of the estimated 25,000 elephants in the country, 6,000 are in Karnataka.

Elephant squads

Elephant attacks in Kodagu is common during summer. Drying up of water bodies and scarce fodder drive them into ravaging crop areas.

The Centre has released Rs. 8.15 lakhs to maintain elephant squads in the affected villages of the district to scare away the animals back into the forests from August 24 to January 16. Of this, Rs. 6.25 lakhs was allocated to the Madikeri division (comprising Madikeri and Somwarpet taluks) and Rs. 1.90 lakhs to Virajpet division, Mr. Kumar said.

Payment of wages

The funds, made over through the Project Elephant scheme, was used for payment of wages to the elephant scare units. The job of the units will be to drive back the elephants into the forests from where they invaded the human habitations and crops.

Funds will be used to reward informers and intelligence gathering, maintenance of the patrolling paths, construction of culverts, bridges and causeways, eliciting public cooperation through mitigation of human-elephant conflict by conducting meetings, supply of crackers, spotlights, kerosene, siren and so on to the squads constituted for scaring away the giants into the forests, Mr. Kumar pointed out.

Powers given

The Range Forest Officer had been delegated powers to constitute such squads to drive back elephants to the forests, he said.

Elephant corridors

In reality, the elephants that have been driven back to forests have returned to spots where they were driven away from.

Experts say those spots were once elephant corridors.

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