Anti Poaching Campaign (Contd)

This is a quick update post. As last time, the past weekend too (18th, 19th), we covered a bunch of villages. This time we saw a banana plantation field that was completely ravaged by elephants. The villager to whom the field belonged was understandably agitated and asked if we could do something about elephant raids. It is difficult to talk about conservation when livelihoods are at stake.

Elephant prevention trenches (EPT), electric fencing and other techniques have been used but none of them seem to deter these big creatures for long and they always seem to find a way out. The villagers have seen some pretty amazing things that these elephants do to bypass the system. They fill up the trenches and cross over. Of course, the villagers too go half way in filling up the trenches, since they want to get their cattle across into the forest for grazing (they deny it though, but we can make out a human hand when we see the filled EPTs).

Among other things that the elephants do to bypass the electric fence, they sometimes get a log of wood, place it on the wire, flatten it and then walk across. Other times, the villagers say, that the elephants take a few steps back and then simply rush into the fence and cut across. Very intelligent creatures, these !!.

A week ago, I read an interview of an elephant expert in Africa where he mentions similar techniques used by African elephants. It is simply astounding how smart these creatures are.

Elephant Whisperer

Elephants and crop raiding is a different problem which hopefully we will work on later.

But the best part of last week's trip was that the forest department had found two abandoned leopard cubs a month ago when they were a week old. The range forest officer is taking care of them now. I got to spend some time with these cute little bundles. The tragedy however is that these cubs would probably spend the rest of their life in a zoo.

To sum up, the weekend was a memorable one. Though I am still waiting to see cubs in the wild with their mom. Hopefully one day...