For the first time in the history of Tirupati, elephant movement was sighted very close to Karakambadi Road, now a buzzing eastern suburban area.
A herd of seven elephants, including a couple of cubs, came all the way from the Mamandur forest towards Karakambadi by moving behind the Amara Raja plant and reached up to Venkatapuram village abutting the four-lane highway.
All this happened around 10.30 p.m., when the day’s hustle-and-bustle did not end, making a couple of panicked motorists alert the Forest Department. The forest sleuths observed dung and elephant footprint a few feet away from the four-lane highway as well as the Child Resource Centre. “Elephants have a tendency to explore and this could only be an inkling of their preference to look out for newer territories,” S. Saravanan, Chief Conservator of Forests, Tirupati Wildlife Management Circle, has told The Hindu.
The herd, believed to have moved from Idupulapaya towards Tirumala several decades ago, remained confined here for long, moving between Talakona and Railway Kodur. “Had they crossed the Tirupati-Kadapa highway or the intervening railway track to the other side, they would have easily moved into the Veligonda hill ranges, which somehow has not happened,” opines the Divisional Forest Officer (wildlife) Nagarjuna Reddy. In view of their instinctive nature to explore, the herd is believed to have moved towards human habitations, triggering a likely man-animal conflict in near future.
What is more worrying is the presence of plastic waste such as cut portions of milk sachets in the dung, as sighted by the team of ecologists from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research). This shows that the elephants could have been moving closer to human habitation for a longer time than expected, which also sheds light on the likelihood of their getting attracted to food waste disposed of indiscriminately in the forest fringe villages.
Even as the issue raised a furore, district administration on Wednesday visited Chennayagunta abutting the forest, exploring the possibility of marking 40 acres of land for housing purpose.
