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The two tuskers' poaching is one of 13 instances of elephants dying unexpectedly in Odisha forests over the course of the past two months, making it the largest short-term loss of life for pachyderms in more than a decade.

Digital Desk: On July 29, a 25-year-old tusker with at least five pellet wounds to its head and ear in the Narasinghpur East range of the Athagarh forest division of Cuttack district passed away from organ failure. One of the pellets may have pierced deeply into the tusker's head, according to the veterinarians who attempted to treat it but were unsuccessful. The injured elephant was originally spotted by locals in the Athagarh division on July 23, who then alerted wildlife activists and the chief wildlife warden. The elephant is most likely the victim of a group of neighbourhood poachers.

On July 25, it was tranquillized, but it was too late because the pellet wounds had already set out septicemia.

 

The tusker's death was a repetition of a similar poaching incident that occurred in June's first week, when locals discovered a different tusker writhing in agony in the same woodland area with at least five pellet wounds to its trunk, face, legs, and body. After former BJD minister and local MLA Debi Prasad Mishra brought the elephant's plight to the attention of state forest minister Pradip Amat in his Facebook post, a team of veterinarians from Nandankanan Zoo in Bhubaneswar was dispatched to cure the animal. A week later the elephant passed away.

 

The two tuskers' poaching is one of 13 instances of elephants dying unexpectedly in Odisha forests over the course of the past two months, making it the largest short-term loss of life for pachyderms in more than a decade. Of the 13, at least 5 are the result of poaching, including the death of a 40-year-old tusker, whose decomposing body and gunshot wound were discovered late last month in a cashew plantation in the Jagannath Prasad forest area in the Ghumsur North Division of the Ganjam district.

 

Two persons were detained on Saturday after forest department officers removed an elephant's tusk from a toilet pipe in the area. The Odisha police's special task unit discovered the bones and carcasses of five elephants, including a tusker, in the Athagarh forest area in June and July. One of the elephants had allegedly been shot dead and buried by forest department employees in order to hide their deaths.

An independent investigative committee of the National Tiger Conservation Authority discovered the remains of 14 elephants in the Similipal Tiger Reserve of the Mayurbhanj district in April and May 2010, causing a significant commotion in the woods of Odisha. The investigation team discovered that the corpses had been burned and destroyed by the field crew in order to obliterate evidence.

 

 

While the state forest department acted quickly in the Similipal poaching case, suspending numerous officials, 10 forest department employees, including a forester, have been arrested in the Athagarh division case this year, while two rangers have been booked on accusations of information suppression. In order to look into the escalating number of elephant deaths and claims of cover-ups, the government has also assembled a special investigation team made up of forest and CID officers, although poaching seems to be unabated.

 

Local wildlife advocates claim that poachers are out of control since the forest service has failed to crack down on wildlife crimes or secure even a single conviction over the past two decades.

 

Elephants are protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and murdering one carries a seven-year prison sentence; yet, no poachers or ivory traders have been found guilty in the past 20 years. The Orissa High Court had stated in 2015 that the widespread poaching for the ivory trade is producing an alarming scenario while refusing bail to infamous poacher Afzal Baig who had been accused in 5 incidents of elephant poaching. "Despite the fact that the elephant population in Odisha increased from 1930 in 2012 to 1954 in 2015, according to the 2015 Elephant Census Report, poaching is creating a worrying situation. Such behaviour is nothing less than a heinous and violent crime, the HC declared.

 

According to government figures, 426 of the at least 970 elephant deaths in Odisha since 2010 were caused by natural causes. Due to the bodies' extreme decomposition, the cause of death was unknown in more than 200 cases. According to Mohanty, 144 elephants were electrocuted while at least 133 were either poisoned or poached.

 

Although the Odisha government released a circular in 2012 holding DFOs responsible for each and every unintentional death of an elephant, activists claimed that the circular has only ever existed on paper.


Belinda Wright, a well-known conservationist, claimed that there is a greater wildlife disaster than the government is willing to acknowledge due to the increased number of elephant deaths from poaching and the concealment of carcasses. If they keep the incident quiet, the Odisha Forest Department won't be able to look into these horrifying alleged crimes against some of their coworkers. The investigation should be open and include reputable, independent specialists from outside the department, she added, for the sake of Odisha and the department itself.

 

The state is experiencing its highest level of human-elephant conflict at the same time when elephant deaths are on the rise. Bhupender Yadav, the Union Minister for Environment, Forestry, and Climate Change, said to the Lok Sabha last month that the majority of the 1,578 individuals killed in elephant attacks in India between 2019–20 and 2021–22, 322 fatalities came from Odisha. West Bengal came in second with 240 cases, followed by Jharkhand with 291 cases.

 

 

 

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