Jairam Ramesh says don’t ply goods trains in tusker corridors at night

As promised by Jairam Ramesh in New York, the environment ministry has taken up the death of seven elephants in West Bengal with the Mamata Banerjee-led railway ministry.

Officials of the ministries met on Tuesday to discuss the matter.

“We discussed increasing the number of elephant corridors in the area [Jalpaiguri district, where the elephant deaths took place] from the current four and examined measures to prevent a repeat,” a senior official in the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) said.

The official, however, rushed to add that roping in elephant trackers, as decided by the ministries in March, wasn’t feasible.

Sources in the ministries said MoEF, urged by the West Bengal forest department, suggested the railways stop plying goods trains in Jalpaiguri at night and limit the speed of all trains to 20 kmph in daytime.

The railway ministry, however, turned down the first proposal, saying plying goods trains at night was important to continue essential supplies to north-eastern states.

Reacting to the proposal to increase the number of corridors, a railway ministry official said, “Additional corridors have to be identified by MoEF. If they create new zones, we will take steps similar to what we have done in the existing corridors.”

Eighty elephant corridors were set up in the country to prevent inbreeding of the animals through habitat fragmentation caused by human actions. Under the current norms, trains drop speed when passing through such corridors.

That is why the railways was quick to point out that the Jalpaiguri accident occurred outside the designated corridor.