Wildlife week
Every year, from the 2nd to the 8th of October, India celebrates its 68th Wildlife Week with an aim to protect the preserved country's fauna. During this week, experts conduct workshops to make people understand the importance of wildlife conservation.
However, Policies do not succeed or fail on their own merits; rather their progress is dependent upon the process of implementation. Unfortunately, it's becoming a symbolic gesture with very few real targets being achieved.
As we draw to the close of the wildlife week, let's take a look at the uncertain & tragic future faced by the Elephants in Odisha.
1)Eighty-two elephants died in Odisha in 2019-20, 77 in 2020-21 and 86 in 2021-22.
2) Thirty-four elephants were killed by poachers, 30 died after being hit by trains and six died in road accidents.
3) Two wild female elephants died of electrocution on August 24, 2022, in Odisha’s Keonjhar forest division, inside the state Krishi Vigyan Kendra.
4) At least 11 jumbos have died of electrocution in the last two years in the state.
5) On July 29, a 25-year-old tusker in Narasinghpur East range of Athagarh forest division of Cuttack district with at least five pellet injuries on its ear and head died of organ failure. The wounded elephant, likely to be a victim of a gang of local poachers in Athagarh division, was first sighted by local people on July 23 who tipped off wildlife activists and later the chief wildlife warden.
It was tranquilised on July 25, but it was too late as the wounds caused by the pellets had triggered septicemia.
6) The death of the tusker was similar to the poaching of a tusker in June's first week, when another tusker with at least 5 pellet injuries on its trunk, face, legs and body was found writhing in pain in the same forest range by local people. A team of vets from Nandankanan Zoo in Bhubaneswar was rushed to treat the elephant who died a week later.
6)The poaching of the two tuskers is among the 13 cases of unnatural deaths of elephants in Odisha forests in the last 3 months making it the biggest casualty of the pachyderms in a short span of more than a decade. Of the 13 deaths, at least 5 are due to poaching including that of a 40-year-old tusker whose decomposed carcass with gunshot injury was found from a cashew orchard in Jagannath Prasad forest range in Ghumsur North Division of Ganjam district late last month. Forest department officials seized a tusk of that elephant from a latrine pipe in the district and arrested 2 people.
Source: Ommcomnews
7)In June and July 2022 the special task force of Odisha police found bones and carcasses of five elephants including a tusker from Athagarh forest range, one of which was shot dead and allegedly buried by the forest department staff to conceal their deaths.
8)On July 24, STF officials recovered partially-burnt and unburnt bones as well as ashes from Tabalei-Deogaon reserve forest and Kolgaon forest in Sambalpur district after being tipped off about it. “While one spot had bones scattered in the other, most of the bones were disposed of elsewhere. From the size of the bones they appeared to be that of large adult males who were poached for ivory,” said a senior STF official.
9)An adult elephant's carcass was found in the Jobra barrage in Cuttack on 28th September 2022. A small herd of elephants entered the Jagatpur area of Cuttack from Athagarh on the 27th of September night, triggering panic among locals as the jumbo went berserk at being separated from its calf by the hordes of people heckling it.
10)On 6th October 2022 Carcasses of two wild elephants were found in the Tileimal Patra forest under the Bamra Badarama range in Odisha’s Sambalpur district.
The above figures are scary & I hope it's a wake-up call to all of us.
Elephants are beautiful, gentle giants and the current largest existing land animals.
"There is a mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks great fires and the sea.”
The threat of extinction of the Elephant is more real than many realise or care about.
