In another rather distressing instance of man-animal conflict, an elephant trampled nine people in the Pathri area of Hardwar (Uttarakhand.
LUCKNOW: In another rather distressing instance of man-animal conflict, an elephant trampled nine people in the Pathri area of Hardwar (Uttarakhand) on Thursday. Seven people have died while two are seriously injured. The elephant was later shot dead by the forest department in an operation that lasted six hours.
The elephant had strayed from the nearby Rajaji National Park into the fields at Khuddaheri village. Villagers made a huge din and threw stones at the tusker when it started damaging their crops. It is after this that the pachyderm got violent.
Chief wildlife warden SK Chandola told reporters the elephant was probably musth, though this is not the normal mating season for elephants. “Male elephants have a bad temper, they often get aggressive when disturbed,” he said. “We had to take the unfortunate decision to kill the elephant. But there was no other way,” Chandola said.
Villagers, however, blamed the delay by the forest department as well as the police for the violence perpetrated by the elephant. “Though the police had arrived when not one person had been killed, they did not open fire. If they had done that, many lives would have been saved,” said Tasleem Ansari, 35, a resident of Khuddaheri. Others told reporters the forest department had been informed soon after the elephant entered the village “but the officials came at least three hours later”.
Renowned elephant expert Mike Pande said, “It’s a clear case of shrinking habitat driving elephants towards human settlements.” He told DNA a lot of villages had “precarious proximity” to Rajaji National Park which is renowned the world over for its successful elephant conservation efforts. The park has over 1,000 Asian elephants.
“Elephants need about 150 kg of food everyday. With their habitat shrinking, they move to nearby villages in search of food. They come in conflict with the villagers when they start grazing in their fields. This is what seems to have happened in this case, too,” he said.
Pande ruled out the tusker running amok due to a musth state. “There is negligible possibility of that as this is not the mating season,” he said.
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