Awareness campaigns will be carried out to avoid attacks on elephants, said the minister. (Representative)
Kolkata:
The West Bengal government has drawn up a master plan involving an application and a mobile medical unit to ensure that there are fewer human-elephant conflicts in the state, Forests Minister Rajib Bandyopadhyay said on Friday of World Environment Day.
The master plan will ensure that there is little interference in the movement of elephants along the corridors of north and south Bengal, Bandyopadhyay told PTI.
Providing details of the management plan, he said, there will be a mobile phone application that will alert forestry personnel and locals about possible movements of a herd or wandering elephant while a The mobile medical unit will be kept ready to treat injured elephants.
In addition, awareness campaigns will be run among villagers to prevent attacks on elephants, said the minister.
“We originally planned to roll out parts of the master plan by July, but the lockdown has delayed everything. It can now be phased in later after the lockout is lifted,” he said.
To minimize the possibility of people coming on the elephant trail, which sometimes happens early in the morning, Bandyopadhyay said villagers living near elephant habitats would be asked not to leave their homes during this time.
Apart from those in the Dooars region of north Bengal, elephant corridors in the state are present in parts of the West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia and West Burdwan districts.
Bandyopadhyay expressed concern over the death of elephants from a collision with moving trains along the Banarhat-Nagrakata route in the Dooars region in recent years.
“The train route has crisscrossed the elephant corridor in the area. Elephants have been using it for ages. We have repeatedly asked the railways to minimize the speed of trains passing through this section. we had also filed an FIR against the railways after the death of a jumbo in recent times, “he said.
On September 27 of last year, the Siliguri-Dhubri Intercity Express struck an elephant trying to cross the tracks between Banarhat and Nagrakata in the jungle. The animal was seriously injured and died later.
Since the line was converted to a wide track, the Banarhat-Nagrakata route has seen several elephant deaths, reports said.
The route, which is over 70 km long, crosses more than one corridor of elephants.
On the death of a pregnant elephant in the forest of the silent valley of Kerala after being fed a pineapple filled with powerful crackers which exploded in her mouth, Mr. Bandyopadhyay said: “It is an inhuman act. We all have to work to protect wildlife and see such animals, the incidents don’t happen again. “
