BANGALORE: Senior Forest Department officials and locals from various parts of the State gathered for a day-long workshop to arrive at solutions to address the daunting concerns related to man-elephant conflict and conservation and management of elephants. Inaugurating the workshop, Forest Minister C P Yogeshwar highlighted the main concerns after speaking to all the forest officials from various parts of the state, who had gathered at the workshop. “The problem is that we have intruded the elephants’ house and so they are leaving their home and straying around. We should not enter their area, be it to acquire more land for infrastructure of for electricity generation. We are now facing the brunt of our own doing,” he felt.Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (wildlife) B K Singh too highlighted some core concerns of the department. The participants debated the issue and made six recommendations. The recommendations were accepted by all the members and the participants arrived at a general consensus. “The major issues are addressing isolated population of elephants in Alur of Hassan District. Further, about how to mitigate elephants conflict in semi-urban and urban areas like Bangalore and Mysore. We also wanted to assert how to deal with heavy crop damage in areas like Kodagu, Mysore, Mandya, Ramanagaram and Chamarajnagar and to arrive at overall long term measures to mitigate human-elephant conflict in the state,” explained Singh.“Our main concern is Alur and Kattepura areas in Hassan. The Cauvery sanctuary is presently being considered as a safe spot for translocating these elephants,” Singh said. The workshop concluded that elephants could be translocated from the point of conservation to distant habitats so that they have higher chances of adaptation and survival.
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