Forest officials, who had enough experiences in handling conflict situations and taming wild jumbos, encountered a totally different problem this time when they decided to tranquilise and translocate a lone wild tusker that was indulging in frequent crop raids and triggering panic in Madukkarai.
But, what came in for debate or turned out to be a bone of contention among the nature enthusiasts was the very idea of tranquilising and translocating the animal into captive atmosphere. On one side, there is pressure from the public and outrage whenever there is a crop raid and other hand is the resistance, objection or criticism from wildlife enthusiasts for the decision to tranquilise the animal.
Caught in a piquant situation, a senior forest official lamented that a decision to tranquilise and capture an animal is just not taken at the drop of a hat. It involved application of mind at all levels and careful scrutiny of the circumstances leading to such a decision. A proposal to tranquilise a jumbo is taken only when there are adequate justifications and the proposal goes right up to the top man in the Forest Department. Even as the department was battling over this and simultaneously making the arrangements for kumkis, the lone tusker managed to find new acquaintances and became a small herd leaving the officials in a fix.
Health wing officials in the Coimbatore Corporation had some tough time in the past. They said that they were well equipped to handle public health crises such as fever outbreaks, but they were finding it difficult to counter the rumours that there was dengue outbreak.
On Saturday morning, forest personnel in uniform performed a pooja before entering the forest as part of their week-long efforts to track lone wild tusker ‘Encounter’ on the city’s outskirts.
One of them was dancing in front of the idol and a bottle of liquor and the video was aired on television channels in a couple of hours. It was in the presence of senior department officers.
While it seemed to be unusual for the rest of the world, a forest officer said it was a traditional practice for tribal people – who are employed in the department as elephant trackers – to pray for their safety and that of their elephants before they entered the forest.
(Reporting by
V.S. Palaniappan, Karthik Madhavan and M.K. Ananth)
