The Koundinya wildlife sanctuary, spread over Palamaner and Kuppam Assembly constituencies flanked by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, is facing a lot of disturbance with the sudden arrival of a four-member aggressive herd of male elephants from Karnataka.
In the last four days, after intimidating the resident elephants at the sanctuary, the herd has raided sugarcane and paddy fields in Punganur, Irala and Somala mandals.
The herd was spotted a week ago inside the sanctuary, after it arrived from Karnataka forests. For a couple of days, the four male elephants, gigantic in size and looking aggressive, kept moving menacingly towards the sanctuary residents. Four days ago, they left the sanctuary and entered the fields at Punganur mandal, destroying standing crops of vegetables and sugarcane. Later, they moved to Somala mandal and are currently camping at the foothills of a hillock in Irala mandal, some 50 km from the wildlife sanctuary.
Farmers from about a dozen villages have approached the Forest Department with complaints of crop loss. They expressed anguish that at a time when their crops were getting ready for harvest in a few weeks, the wild elephants had been striking terror in their fields, preventing them from night vigil.
Divisional Forest Officer (Chittoor West) Sunil Kumar Reddy told The Hindu that the herd was wrecking damage to crops in the western mandals.
‘Very cunning’
“The four are found to be very cunning and belligerent in nature. It seems they are very much habituated to sugarcane crop. At night, they are raiding the crops and at daybreak, they retreat into the thickets. Int is very difficult to drive back such animals into the sanctuary or towards Karnataka forests,” he said.The DFO said that a team of 16 forest personnel was working round the clock, monitoring the movement of the herd, devising means to drive it back into its habitat.
Meanwhile, it is suspected that the herd could be responsible for the death of a couple of elephants deep inside the sanctuary in recent months.