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Elephant herd enters Ganjam

BERHAMPUR: A herd of wild elephants that has strayed out of Chandaka elephant sanctuary is moving around areas of Ganjam district.

This herd has started to create panic in remote human habitats in the Khallikote forest range of Ganjam district. There are 16 elephants in this herd. At least one tusker and two calf elephants are part of it. Rest members of the herd are females or young males. This herd had strayed out of Chandaka elephant sanctuary around four months back. One of them had died near Barunei in Khurda district. Rest of the herd had also entered the bird sanctuary area of Chilika lake. After getting driven out of it, the herd had reached the jungle area near Narayani in Ganjam district.

According to Berhampur Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), A.K.Jena they had hoped that the elephant herd would search for deep jungles and travel into the Barbara jungles near Narayani, which may become their permanent living place. But it did not happen. These elephants from Chandaka seem to have developed some kind of affinity towards human habitat as Chandaka sanctuary is now situated too close to concrete jungle of Bhubaneswar. On Monday night these elephants were spotted near Rambha, said the DFO. The forest officials had also tried to drive these elephants into the Barbara jungles few days back with torches and drums but they did not succeed in their efforts. “We did not take up this effort in massive scale as the whole area is dotted with human habitats and panicked elephants could have strayed into the villages”, Mr Jena said. They still hope that the wild pachyderms could be driven into the Barbara jungle after completion of paddy harvesting season as standing crop and just harvested paddy is attracting these animals near the human habitats.

Forest officials started making people aware about the dos and don’ts regarding presence of wild elephants near their villages.

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