The last four of five young elephants sent from Assam to temples in Tamil Nadu this month reached their new homes late last week, completing a transfer the Gauhati High Court declined to stop but has asked Assam to account for, in a detailed affidavit on the animals’ welfare, before it hears the case again on 15 October.
elephant
A mother elephant and her two calves were found dead in a paddy field in Salboni, West Bengal, on Sunday morning, electrocuted by a wire farmers had strung around their fields in one of the state’s most important elephant habitats.
A wild tusker with a long history of raiding villages near Panniyar in Idukki killed a 47-year-old tribal man in the small hours of Wednesday, an attack sharp enough that the Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department has now promised to relocate the animal out of the region.
An elephant named Bharat spent two days refusing to leave the spot in Rewa district, Madhya Pradesh, where his companion died of electrocution, forcing the state’s Forest Department to bring in four tuskers from two tiger reserves before he could be safely captured.
Madhuri, a female elephant known in Kolhapur as Mahadevi, is returning home after 13 months at Vantara in Jamnagar, Gujarat, under a court-backed order that keeps Vantara’s vets checking on her every fortnight.
Sixteen elephants at Kanha Tiger Reserve clocked out of patrol duty this week for a six-day break.
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.
A tiger has killed a second person within a fortnight near Gudalur, in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district, and the state forest department has put three thermal drones, six cages and around fifty camera traps into the search for it.
Wildlife Trust of India has switched on a WhatsApp-based elephant alert network in a Uttarakhand village. In West Bengal, the state’s forest minister attended a meeting on securing elephant corridors through the region’s tea gardens.
Five Indian states now have their own paper trail of where elephants and people collide most often, and why.