GUWAHATI: A wild jumbo was discovered dead in Palashbari in Kamrup Rural on Friday as the Assamese man-elephant conflict claimed lives. Early in the morning, locals in the Sontola region spotted the elephant. A death inquiry was launched right away when the forest department was notified.
However, angles of electrocution are being investigated while the precise cause of death is yet unknown. The community performs a customary final rites ceremony for the jumbo after the occurrence. It should be noted that other man-elephant conflicts have been reported in recent days from all throughout the state.
Another wild elephant was discovered dead earlier this month at a tea estate in the Assamese Sonitpur area late on a Tuesday night. At the Adabari tea farm close to Balipara in the Sonitpur district of Assam, the wild elephant's body was discovered.
Locals in the region immediately alerted police and forest officials in Assam after spotting the wild elephant's death. Police and members of the Assam Forest Department's team arrived on the scene quickly and removed the dead elephant's carcass.
According to government statistics, 800 people and about 250 pachyderms have perished in combat between humans and elephants over the past ten years. In India between 2009–10 and 2020–21, 186 elephants were killed in train collisions, according to statistics from the union government. Assam was the state with the most of them—62—followed by West Bengal (57) and Odisha (27).
After Karnataka, Assam has the second-highest population of wild elephants, at 5,719, according to a 2017 census (6,049). Eight elephants have died in Assam this year as a result of train strikes, four of them in the month of September and four of them in the month of October.
Wild elephants are compelled to leave reserve woods each winter to raid standing farms due to the eroding forest cover over time and their constant need for food. When this occurs, the pachyderms occasionally end up being run over by trains, trapped in holes on building sites or electrocuted to death by low-hanging, high-tension electric wires. In order to protect their crops, some locals poison or electrocute elephants.
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