Man-elephant conflict takes serious turn at Nagrijuli along Indo-Bhutan Border

A Correspondent

Tamulpur: Due to the continuous atrocity of wild elephants during the last 15 years, people of greater Nagrijuli area along the Indo-Bhutan border in the district of Baksa have to live in terror. Due to encroachment by some miscreants, forest areas have become smaller and wild elephants are facing food shortage.

In search of food, big herds of wild elephants come down from the hills and enter the villages and involve themselves in conflict with human beings. In the last 15 years, more than 90 people were killed by wild elephants and more than 13 wild elephants lost their lives. On October 31, a big herd of wild elephants killed Farmar Naresh Mandal in Jaypur village under Nagrijuli police outpost and destroyed large paddy fields at Baltipar village.

On Sunday night, a big herd of wild elephants again entered Jaypur village and created terror the whole night. The herd of wild elephants broke down the houses of Surya Das, Santosh Bala, Mithun Buswash and Ananta Das and ate all the paddy and rice stored inside their houses. The herd of wild elephants destroyed all the household goods of those families. Moreover, the herd of wild elephants broke down more than 200 betel nut trees, coconut trees along with banana trees. Villagers have become helpless.

Parimal Shill, president of Baksa district Bangali Juba Chatra Federation, with a team, rushed to village Jaypur and studied the environment. He alleged that some people had destroyed forests and encroached upon the land of wild elephants. Moreover, he alleged that there were many illegal sawmills in Tamulpur subdivision for which encroachments were going on. He demanded the forest department to seize all these illegal sawmills to check encroachment.

Parimal Shill said that by organizing some awareness programmes, the forest department had completed its duty. No measure has been taken by the forest department to control the ongoing wild elephant-human conflict for which many families had becomes homeless, he alleged. Shill demanded specific schemes to control the wild elephant- human conflict in order to protect the lives and properties of people as well as to protect the lives of the wild jumbos.

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