IWN Report — Thursday, 10 September 2026
A wild elephant is moving through the Marangi-Bakiyal forest block near Numaligarh, in Assam’s Golaghat district, with an old tyre wedged tightly around its neck. Residents spotted it on Thursday morning after it wandered out of the forest into a human-inhabited area, and the tyre had not been removed as of Thursday afternoon.
As reported by The Sentinel Assam:
Today, morning an unusual and concerning incident was reported from Bakiyal near Numaligarh in Golaghat, after a wild elephant was spotted moving through the area with an old tyre stuck around its neck. As per eyewitnesses, the elephant had emerged from the forest and entered a human-inhabited area when they noticed the tyre lodged around its neck. The circumstances that led to the tyre becoming trapped remain unclear.
Khumtai MLA Mrinal Saikia has contacted the Assam Forest Department to arrange the tyre’s removal, NorthEast Now reported, and has asked residents not to approach, surround or attempt a rescue themselves. The Bakiyal forest block, part of the wider Marangi area, has a history of human-elephant conflict. Forest officials are expected to assess the animal before deciding how to safely cut the tyre free.
It’s the third elephant welfare case in Assam in recent times. Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) field teams have treated two other injured elephants in the days before the tyre sighting — one in Raimona National Park, the other near Kaziranga — after run-ins with a wire snare and a muddy trench respectively.
Raimona Rescue
On 7 September, a joint veterinary team in Raimona National Park tranquillised a wild Asian elephant to cut a wire snare out of her trunk. Forest guards at the Daogen Gonthong anti-poaching camp, inside Raimona’s Kachugaon Forest Division near the Indo-Bhutan border, had first spotted her wound on 1 September. She slipped back into the forest before they could intervene and did not reappear near the camp until six days later, giving the team its opening.
The team — Dr Prabhat Basumatary of Manas Tiger Reserve, Wildlife Trust of India’s (WTI) Dr Daoharu Baro, and Dr Pankaj Chakraborty of the State Veterinary Dispensary in Gossaigaon, working with forest range officer Biswajit Basumatary — chemically immobilised the roughly 25-year-old elephant and worked on her for about half an hour. Dr Baro said the wire had cut deep enough to cause soft-tissue damage and pus discharge; the team cleaned the wound, removed dead tissue and dressed it with antiseptic before guiding her back into the forest.
Mustafizur Ali Ahmed, Divisional Forest Officer for Kachugaon, said his staff had tracked the elephant since the day she was first sighted and suspect she picked up the snare in the reserve’s fringe areas, which the division is now watching more closely.
Kaziranga Calf
Further east, near Kaziranga National Park, a calf estimated at four to six weeks old slipped into a muddy trench at the Seconee Tea Estate in Jakhalabandha on 9 September. Its herd tried to free it and could not; tea garden workers, alerted by its distress calls, raised the alarm with Kaziranga’s park authorities.
A team from the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC), led by centre manager and lead veterinarian Dr Bhaskar Choudhury, lifted the calf out and treated it for dehydration and muscular exhaustion at the nearest forest beat office. Through the evening, the team tried repeatedly to reunite it with its herd, without success.
With reunion no longer possible, WTI admitted the calf to CWRC, where it now joins ten other elephants already under the centre’s care. Dr Choudhury said the rescue reflected close cooperation between tea garden workers, forest officials and vets, and called rehabilitation the calf’s “second chance at life.”
Sources: The Sentinel Assam · NorthEast Now · Wildlife Trust of India — Raimona elephant rescue · Wildlife Trust of India — Kaziranga calf rescue