Other States - Orissa   

Search on for freed elephant

BERHAMPUR: Frantic search continued on Wednesday to locate the second female elephant which returned to Lakhari sanctuary with reports that it may have fallen prey to overdose of tranquiliser and stress during transportation from Andhra Pradesh.

The forest officials confirm that it is missing. The Berhampur conservator of forests, V. Raja Reddy, visited the Lakhari sanctuary to take note of the situation following death of a female elephant transported under Operation Gajendra. According to him, two teams are searching for the second elephant that was released in the forest on Sunday. The Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Gajapati, Manas Ranjan Bhatt, who is camping at the spot, said around forty forest labourers with torches had been deployed to track down the elephant. Even a reward of Rs. 1,000 was declared for the person who first locates it. Both Mr. Bhatt and Mr. Reddy said till the elephant or its body is located, nothing can be said about it.

The DFO had earlier expressed that as per the veterinary experts, the life of the second elephant was also under threat till 72 hours of its release into Lakhari on Sunday evening. The other female elephant released along with it died the same night due to stress and overuse of tranquilisers. Moreover the second elephant was shocked over the death of its partner. Death of the elephant led to much uproar and intervention of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to press upon the Andhra government to defer the ‘Operation Gajendra’ to transport the herd of wild elephants of Lakhari, who have already killed 16 persons in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh from Andhra Pradesh to their original abode. Following a letter by Mr. Patnaik to his Andhra counterpart, the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department released the four other wild elephants of the herd that they had gathered up for tranquilisation for transportation to Orissa. They also discarded the tranquilisation method to transport the animals.

On Wednesday, the Andhra forest department brought a ‘Hulla’ team from West Bengal to use torches and drums to shoo away the elephant herd of seven remaining elephants out of Andhra limits into Orissa. This operation would start from Thursday evening. But Mr. Bhatt said their Andhra counterparts had not yet informed them of it.

“Yet we make arrangements to protect human habitats from these wild pachyderms and lead them to Lakhari if they would be shooed out from Andhra into Orissa,” he said.

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