Gonikoppal, June 21: In Kodagu, especially in various villages including Thitimathi, Mayamudi, Kurchi, and Beeruga in South Kodagu, herds of wild elephants are being found in the gardens of coffee growers and farmers. To control the encroachment of wild elephants, farmers and growers are taking precautions by building solar fences around their gardens and thereby preventing wild elephants from entering the gardens.
But these herds of wild elephants break the solar fences and enter the gardens and destroy the coffee, areca, coconut and other paddy fields growing there, causing immense losses to the farmers. In recent years, the encroachment of wild elephants has kept farmers and growers awake.
The forest department is choosing untrained youths while appointing the staff required for wild elephant control and not appointing staff on the forest fringes. The failure to use technology, failure to repair elephant trenches along the route of wild elephants, the department staff returning after the wild elephants enter the country by driving elephants from one area to another area, senior officials not properly informing the government about wild elephant control, not tightening the beat system at night, not using AI camera satellites, not monitoring elephants fitted with radio collars, not installing sophisticated cameras in the areas where wild elephants come from the forest, are all contributing to the failure of the wild elephant operation.
The forest department, which has been washing its hands of some solutions to crop destruction, has consistently failed in the operation to drive wild elephants back to the forest. When the farmers' protests and villagers' anger were on the forest department, it was seen that
Although the operation to drive the herd of wild elephants into the forest was carried out, it does not seem to have yielded any expected results so far.
The department's measures to reduce the elephant-human conflict are not yielding results. The operations to drive away wild elephants have not provided a permanent solution and the department is spending a lot of money for this. Although railway barricades, solar hanging fences, barrier walls, elephant-proof ditches and solar fences have been built in many areas adjacent to the forest border, elephants are crossing these and entering densely populated areas. Due to this, workers and common people who encounter these wild elephants in the early morning and evening hours are facing a lot of trouble and there have already been deaths.
Due to repeated and ineffective measures, elephants driven from one plantation to another coffee plantation enter neighboring plantations on the same day or within a few hours, causing problems for the people there.
Farmers are constantly facing loss of their property and security of life. Farmers are suffering crop damage as a result of continuous encroachment by wild elephants. In order to reduce elephant-human conflict, the installation of radio collars for elephants with elephant herds needs to be accelerated.
Light and sound-based guidance systems that do not harm wild animals should be implemented at night. Drones and scientific technology should be used for the operation of driving wild elephants into the selected forest area.
The operation team should build sheds on the edge of the forest area and start the operation from there when the wild elephants enter the country. If the operation is started after the wild elephants have entered the densely populated areas and farmers' plantations, the expected results will not be achieved. Watch towers should be built in selected places for the operation of wild elephants. Efforts should be made to install radio collars on some elephants in groups where elephants come in droves, and then send the elephants back from there by detecting the signals received through them. If such decisions and measures are taken urgently by the authorities, elephant-human conflict can be brought under control to some extent.
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