Four wild elephants died after coming into contact with live power cables passing through a private estate at Ammathi Vontiangadi village in Virajpet taluk of Karnataka’s Kodagu district on Tuesday.
In a similar incident on June 14, two elephants had died in an abandoned coffee estate near Kannagala village, also in Virajpet.
This has taken the death toll of elephants owing to “accidental” electrocution to six in just one month.
Heavy rain and gutsy wind lashed the district for two days resulting in electricity cables hanging low, some reports said.
Low-hanging wires
Conservator of Forests Manoj Kumar told The Hindu that as per initial reports, the elephants came in contact with the low-hanging wires while foraging for fodder and died on the spot. While two of them were adults, two appeared to be calves. The elephants were thought to have been in the estate for four or five days, he said.
The Forest Department had claimed that elephant deaths due to electrocution caused by low-hanging wires had been eliminated in Kodagu over the last two years.
Mr. Kumar said he would convene a meeting with Chamundeshwari Electricity Corporation Ltd. (CESC).
“We will urge them to take up underground cabling or use other technology in areas known to attract elephants. If that fails, we will take up the issue with the State government,” he said.
From the point of view of the power utility, Ramachandra, Superintending Engineer, CESC, said an ongoing project for elephant corridors to strengthen electricity cables and maintain a vertical ground clearance of a minimum of 20 ft was being pursued.
Estates must alert
“Death due to electrocution in forests has reduced. But in case of lines passing through estates and plantations, we have little say,” he said.
Such deaths could be prevented if estate managers alert the CESC about the movement of elephants, said Mr. Ramachandra.
Kodagu district harbours a good number of elephants that migrate from forests to estates, and the area under coffee plantation was more than the forest cover. So driving back elephants to the forest is difficult, said sources.
At the recent All India Synchronised Asian Elephant Census, the authorities included coffee plantations in Kodagu for the exercise to arrive at a baseline figure. Estimates of elephants in plantations varies from 50 to nearly 200.
Mass death
The “accidental” electrocution of these elephants in Kodagu is the highest mass death of pachyderms in a single incident in recent years.
The previous such mass death took place in November 2008, when four elephants were electrocuted in Kappsoge village in Nanjangud taluk. This incident had forced the High Court of Karnataka to suo motu take up the matter with the State government, which was directed to form an elephant task force to put in place measures for effective wildlife management.
“Accidental” electrocution takes places when elephants come in contact with low-hanging power lines passing through forests or coffee plantations.
Though the CESC has initiated measures to increase the height of power cables passing through forests, it has little monitoring over cables passing through estates.
Apart from this, the Mysuru-Chamarajanagar-Kodagu belt has a history of elephant deaths owing to electrocution caused by illegal power lines. Farmers tend to fence their agricultural tracts to ward off wild animals, but some of them surreptitiously connect it to live power cables.
Though unofficially it is stated that cultivators resort to such measures to ward off the marauding wild boars to save standing crops, even elephants have died in large numbers over the years.
