The farmers of half-a-dozen tribal hamlets and forest fringe villages in Ramakuppam mandal of Kuppam constituency are worried about the continuous presence of wild elephants with fresh raids on crops at Gollapalle village, destructing standing vegetable crops.
A herd of elephants, said to be around 13 animals, invaded the crops at Gollapalle around 3 a.m., when the villagers woke up to the trumpeting. They watched crop destruction till dawn and ventured out of houses after the elephants retreated into nearby thickets.
Forest officials from Kuppam reached the village and inspected the trampled crops. The officials deployed trackers to watch the movement of the pachyderms and to prevent them from coming closer to human habitations. They said that the solar fencing and digging of elephant-proof trench works were going on and once it was completed, the problem of wild elephants would be reduced to the maximum level.
Meanwhile, the forest officials maintain that as against the regular feature of elephants criss-crossing the tri-State junction at Kuppam, flanked by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka ending by January, this year the trouble has come to linger even at the fag-end of March with summer set to peak.
It is observed that the elephants were reluctant to leave the zone due to drying up of water sources and non-availability of sufficient fodder in the forests.
The officials had already mooted the proposal to create water ponds and fodder stocks deep inside the forests to prevent their entering the fields.