Tusker electrocuted to death near Corbett Tiger Reserve

  • | Monday | 1st February, 2021

On Sunday morning, in a tragic incident, a 30-year-old elephant was electrocuted to death barely 50 metres away from the Corbett Tiger Reserve. The jumbo was struck by an electric wire on a pole. This is the second such elephant death recorded within a month this year in the state.

On Sunday morning, in a tragic incident, a 30-year-old elephant was electrocuted to death barely 50 metres away from the Corbett Tiger Reserve. The jumbo was struck by an electric wire on a pole. This is the second such elephant death recorded within a month this year in the state.

The forest officials on the spot confirmed that the death is not related to poaching as the body of the tusker was intact. “The postmortem ascertained that the tusker sustained a 29-cm-deep wound due to electric wire. The spot had a pole with a bulb on it. The elephant probably tried to touch the wire,” said Dr Dushyant Sharma, senior veterinary officer, Corbett Tiger Reserve.

Forest officials have identified 17 such sensitive locations in and around the tiger reserve, where high- power electricity wires are hanging low, posing threat to the wildlife of the area.

“The issue of high-power electric cables hanging low needs to be fixed by the power department. I have asked all the stakeholders – villagers, power corporation, Corbett officials, and nearby forest division authorities — to conduct a meeting on Monday so that the wildlife doesn`t get hurt due to human errors. Ideally, the power department should fix these sagging electric wires annually. However, it seems that they are lagging behind and our wildlife is bearing the brunt,” said JS Suhag, chief wildlife warden, Uttarakhand forest department.

According to forest department data, a total of 450 elephants have died in the state since 2001. Of these, 43 jumbos, including the aforementioned one, died due to electrocution.

In 2020, Uttarakhand lost two jumbos to electrocution. Thereafter, the forest department had asked its frontline staff to stay vigilant in the fringe forest areas where villagers often lay electric wire to save their farms and themselves from wild animals like leopards and wild boar.


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