Chamarajanagar: In a rare elephant rescue operation, the Forest Department in Karnataka has cut the haphazardly grown tusks of an elephant to serve a two-pronged purpose—relieve the tusker of the difficulty in eating food and provide a sigh of relief to the local villagers in Chamarajanagar district of the state.
The experiment of cutting the tusks of an elephant captured at Gopalaswamy Hill in Bandipur Tiger Reserve of Gundlupet taluk and releasing it into the wild on May 8 has been successful.
The Bandipur Forest Department successfully treated the elephant by cutting the tusks which had grown haphazardly due to which the elephant could not lift its trunk due to the intertwining of its teeth. With the elephant not able to lift its trunk to the higher tree branches, it had been raiding the farmers' land and damaging standing crops in the Gopalaswamy hills of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, Bandipur CFO Prabhakaran said.
“The wildebeest used to eat the sugarcane, banana plant, tomato and other vegetables grown at the ground level and easily satisfy its hunger by attacking the fields. This was a headache for the farmers and the forest department. After we cut the elephant's tusks which had grown haphazardly, the elephant is healthy in the forest. We are going to keep an eye on the elephant for a few more days,” he added.
The CFO said that the department had obtained the required permission to cut the elephant's tusks under law.
The farmers had been outraged by the menace of the elephant, which was eating and destroying the crops of the farmers' fields around Hangal in Gundlupet Taluk. Later, the alert forest department captured the forest on May 8 and released it to the Gundre zone of Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
Farmers of the affected villages including Hangala, Kaligaudanahalli, Devarahalli and surrounding villages of GS Betta Zone of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, had met Forest Minister Eshwara Khandre during his recent visit to Bandipur and requested him to intervene in the matter.
