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Wild tuskers find 'home' in Pilibhit Tiger Reserve

Kanpur: Two wild tuskers , which had probably strayed in the Rohilkhand region from the Terai belt of the Himalayan Kingdom (Nepal) on June 27, have been successfully released in the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve. A team of vets and senior forest officials had to toil hard for the past couple of days to capture both the wild elephants, which had trampled four to death, including a forest guard.



A team of vets, including Mujeeb-ur-Rahman from Karnataka, Dushyant and Vimal Raj from Jim Corbett National Park, Sanath Muliya from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and RK Singh from Kanpur zoo, under the supervision of the project manager and chief conservator of forest, Jhansi, PP Singh, carried out the operation of capturing the wild tuskers.

Among vets was also senior veterinarian of Kanpur zoo, Dr RK Singh, who co-ordinated and supervised the entire exercise. Both the tuskers were violent and had to be captured at the earliest to minimise losses.

Talking to TOI over phone from Piliphit Tiger Reserve, Singh said that both the tuskers had probably strayed into the Indian territory from Nepal.

He said that both are wild, and one of them is very aggressive and violent. It was a risky operation since both the tuskers were violent and one of them used to attack while the other one had to be tied after being tranqualised, Singh further said.

"As they had strayed into the villages of Bareilly and Rampur, the two tuskers drew large crowds. They wrecked havoc and had killed four people. We, therefore, had to capture them immediately for which they were first tranqualised on July 17. They were tied to a tree in Rampur, and were given booster sedation dose to load them in two separate vehicles and were finally transported to Pilibhit. It was on late Thursday night that they were relocated to Pilibhit Tiger Reserve", said Singh while talking in detail about the entire exercise.

He also said that three JCB cranes and hydra vehicles had to be used during the operation. Also, three cow elephants from Dudhwa Tiger Reserve were used in the operation to attract the male wild elephants.

"The operation was risky. As the two elephants were inseparable, this made our task of cornering and tranqualising them very difficult. Though one of the tuskers is violent, but we were successful in relocating them to Pilibhit Tiger Reserve", he added.

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