Radio collars to bell rogue jumbos near B’luru NH (Chennai, India)

Motorists using national highway 5 (Chennai – Bengaluru highway) and those living along the highway can soon be rid of the fear of elephants crossing the highway or raiding crops in the area. The forest department is planning to radio-collar half a dozen crop-raiding elephants, which would help send alerts if the elephants approach human habitation.

Asian elephant expert and professor of Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Raman Sukumar told TOI that the state government has obtained permission from the Union ministry of environment and forests to take up the work. Tamil Nadu chief wildlife warden V K Melkani has also given his nod for the work.

During harvesting season it may be a crisis of elephant raid time so they should leave some molasses and water some distance from the plantations and fence them to prevent entering. The elephants see… Read MoreKartic Krishnan

Raman Sukumar successfully radio-collared a herd of crop-raiding pachyderms in West Bengal more than a decade ago. Whenever the animals came close to human habitations, alerts were sent. The effort helped in monitoring the movement of the herd on a real time basis. The alerts helped forest officials to drive the elephants back to the forest before they could raid the crops or do other damage. Elephant attacks came down along with human deaths.

Tranquilising the selected six elephants will be done over a period of a few weeks. At a time one elephant will only be tranquilised to tie the radio collar, a senior forest officer said.

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