Wild baby Jumbo dies at Watilong

Death of an elephant calf at the Watilong area under Telimura triggered tension throughout the region forcing the administration to jump in order to bring normalcy.

Reportedly, the dead body of a wild elephant has been spotted today in the jungles of Watilong, an area elongated to Atharamura hills range and predominantly recognized as one of the elephants dominated areas of the state, under Kalyanpur forest range.

As soon as the body was spotted a fresh row triggered over its burial and final rights. In one hand, the locals, most of them farmers and largely affected by the hordes of elephants. According to the locals, if the elephant is buried at the location where it has been found, usually done by the forest department every time, hordes of elephants will return back at the area and cause huge devastation to the paddy fields.

“We have witnessed it earlier also; when an elephant is buried other elephants come in the spot sniffing by and do what they want. The kind of devastation wild jumbos do in these areas cannot be explained by words” said a local.

However, after facing severe protests from the parts of locals, the Forest officials decided to change the location of burial to Khasiamangal. “Locals sharply denied allowing us to bury the jumbo calf. We decided to perform the burial activities at Khasiamangal followed by the protests” said range officer Niranjan Debnath.

Local sources said, the destructive activities of elephants have been reported since last 15 to 20 days. Some sources said that angered by the repeated attacks of the elephants, the locals laid electric wires in the gateway of elephant passage. “The death of the elephant can be a fall out of the prohibitory arrangements made by the locals” said a local in the condition of anonymity.

On the other hand, the forest people dispelled all such claims and said that people were “speculating” and “making stories”. “These are all speculation and malicious campaign in order to disturb the repo between locals and the forest personnel. According to veterinary doctors, the death of the elephant can be due to deadly ‘Enthrax’ or because of a musth fight” said a forest official.

Doctor, he said, has advised the department not to go for autopsy right now as if the death of the elephant is caused by “Enthrax” it may infect the people performing the activity. Samples have been collected and forwarded to the lab to ascertain whether it was infected or not. If the reports come negative, the post mortem would be done henceforth, added the forest official.

On the other hand, locals also alleged that the forest department had been directed to take preemptive measures and build the capacity of the human dwellings adjacent of elephant infested areas so that they can thwart any such situation but no positive signs had been seen.

“Whenever we face such a situation we have to call the forest personnel. If they train us for such a situation which is their duty, the situation would have been otherwise” said a local.