An adult male elephant died of electrocution when it accidentally came into contact with a power line in the Bitherkad forest range in Gudalur. The carcass of the animal was found only on Monday. Forest department officials believe that it could have died more than a week ago.
Forest department officials said that the animal had died inside a private tea estate and was found by an estate employee on Monday. The estate had allegedly not been functioning for over a week, and workers only returned on Monday.
District Forest Officer, Gudalur Division, Sumesh Soman, rushed to the spot along with other department officials and staff. A postmortem was conducted on Monday evening.
It is believed that the elephant was trying to eat from an areca palm tree when one of the branches of the tree fell on top of the power line and came into contact with the elephant. Officials believe that the tusker, believed to be around 20-years-old, was part of a herd that was travelling from the Bitherkad forest range and into the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) when the incident occurred.
Power lines running through elephant habitats continue to be a major threat to elephants in the district. In MTR earlier this year, a tusker died after the bamboo it was feeding on came into contact with a power line running through a private resort premises, while in Cherambadi range in Gudalur, an elephant was among seven wild animals that were electrocuted during a power leakage from an overhead power-line.
In 2019, another elephant, aged around 15 years, died in Cherambadi when an elephant feeding on some fruits from a tree was electrocuted when it accidentally touched a power line. Meanwhile, in 2017, two elephants died when they came into contact with a snapped power line in Srimadurai in Gudalur.
