Solar fences to repel jumbos now useless in many forests

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, May 15: During the erstwhile Congress regime, electric fences were installed in different forest divisions of Assam to ward off straying elephants and reduce man-elephant conflicts. But many of these installed electric fences are now non-functiol. The areas where these fencings are not working have again become vulnerable to depredations of wild elephants.

Was there corruption in the installation of such electric fences, given the fact that these are now all useless? It may be mentioned that the fences were solar-powered.

Official records stated that electric fencing was installed in 239 km long area in 15 forest divisions with an expenditure of Rs 6.41 crore. Villages under these forest divisions are ‘easy targets’ for wild elephants which often enter these villages in search of food, resulting in man-animal conflict. Such conflicts in the State have claimed several lives of scores of people and jumbos in the recent past.

The 15 forest divisions where electric fences were installed are EAWL Division, Jorhat (42.5 km), Digboi Division (3 km), Dibrugarh Division (5 km), Golaghat Division (6 km), Sivasagar Division (13 km), Jorhat Division (15 km), Lakhimpur Division (9 km), Karimganj Division (2 km), gaon (T) Division (40 km), gaon South Division (43 km), Sonitpur East Division (31 km), Sonitpur West Division (5 km), Goalpara Division (15 km), Kamrup East Division (4 km) and Mangaldai (WL) Division (5.5 km).

A government report as on March 2017 stated that out of 239 km of electric fences installed in these 15 forest divisions, fences in 56 km long area are presently not working while fences in the remaining 183 km are more or less functioning.

It is a cause of grave concern that large sections of these electric fences have been rendered useless, despite crores of rupees spent towards their installation. The work was carried out by the Forest Department under the then Congress government in the state.