The Forest Department will prefer soft measures to conventional fencing methods in its efforts to minimise the man-animal conflict in forest fringes in the State. The soft measures will include getting more trained elephants called Kumkis to deal with the wild elephant menace.
Officers in the Walayar range of the Palakkad forest division replicated the success story that Kumkis scripted at Dhoni sometime ago. After the successful deployment of Kumkis at Dhoni to drive away the wild tuskers that had colonised the green patches there, the three Kumkis were being used effectively in the Walayar range since Monday.
Palakkad Divisional Forest Officer Narendra Nath Veluri said that the soft measures such as the use of Kumkis were found more effective and economical for the government. “Instead of spending crores of rupees for rail fencing in regions like Walayar, soft measures like this are found to be more effective,” he said.
“Dhoni is now a zero conflict area. We could expose the elephants hidden in forest patches there and drive them back to the forests,” said Mr. Veluri. He said the three Kumkis named Neelakandan, Surendran, and Augustian, would continue to patrol areas such as Kottekkad, Elambarakkad, Ooroli, and Arangottukulambu in search of wild elephants for the next few weeks. Three tuskers were driven back to the forest in the first two days of the Kumki operation.
The Forest Department has identified a dozen-odd wild elephants having occupied the forest areas near Walayar. Four of them were big bulls and the others were of medium size. Except a big bull, all others were in herds.
What worries the forest staff is the size and age of the Kumkis. None of the three Kumkis on the job at Walayar is a big bull. Neelakandan is 24 years old; Surendran is 22, and Augustian only 14. Alone, they may not be a match for a wild big bull.
But the Forest staff circumvented this disadvantage by cleverly getting the three Kumkis charge together at individual elephants after getting the herds dispersed with crackers. “If a big bull charges back at a Kumki, it will be hard. Therefore, we can take on individual tuskers only in a concerted move,” said Mr. Veluri.
“What the Kumkis actually do is to ensure area domination. By dominating the forest patches close to human settlements, the Kumkis give signals to the wild herds to go back to the forests,” he said.
