BHUBANESWAR: One more elephant was found dead inside the Karlapat wildlife sanctuary in Kalahandi district on Sunday. With this, the elephant death toll in this sanctuary has touched six. The Centre for Wildlife Health in the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) Bhubaneswar confirmed the death of these jumbos due to haemorrhagic septicaemia (HS).
During the last two weeks, five female elephants and one calf died due to the possible bacterial infection. The experts suspect that the infection might be transmitted from the stagnant water of the water bodies inside the forest, but the exact source of the infection is yet to be ascertained.
T Ashok Kumar, divisional forest officer (South), Kalahandi, said a female elephant of around 38-year-old found dead inside the sanctuary on Sunday. “It was the member of the herd having a bacterial infection. One calf of three weeks was among the six deceased elephants. It seems that all of these wild animals died for the same reason,” he added.
He said they are trying to locate the source of infection. “We are also searching whether any cattle died anywhere near the water bodies in the jungle to contaminate the water source. We are using drone cameras to locate this and also monitoring the other jumbo herds. Cattle immunization programmes have been started in the periphery and sanctuary area to vaccinate the cattle to keep these domestic animals safe from infection,” he added.
The DFO said they have been monitoring the elephants physically and also using camera traps at 15 places in the sanctuary area. We check their dung and mark their symptoms to know about their condition. We have already disinfected several water bodies inside and periphery of the sanctuary area. Water samples have been collected for the test,” he added.
Niranjan Sahu, coordinator of the Centre for Wildlife Health, OUAT, said all these deceased elephants have the same symptoms and died of haemorrhagic septicaemia after having bacterial infection. “These bacteria normally stay inside the mouth of the wild animals. After the animals get tired or remain in stress, these bacteria flare up and attack the host. We suspect this bacterial infection might have occurred through any livestock, carnivorous or birds via water sources,” he added.
Sahu said this disease in elephants will affect the respiratory and digestive system and damage the intestine and lungs. It will get high temperature and bloody diarrhoea, he added.
A calf had died on Saturday. An expert team had visited the sanctuary on Saturday to investigate the possible cause of mass elephant death. It returned after conducting field analysis and suggesting measures to save the jumbos from the disease. The sanctuary, spread over 175 square km, is the habitat of many Asian predator and prey populations including birds and reptiles.