Wild Elephants Invade Flood Relief Camps

Displaced  and  starved  by  devastating  floods in both East and West Midnapur Districts  of West Bengal, elephants are circling  the  relief camps set up for  flood-ravaged people in those two districts ostensibly in search of food.

In one such camp set up at Deulbar village school, some 200Km from Calcutta, four elephants were seen encircling the school on 19th , 20th and 21st  June’08 at night. The 450 inmates of the camp had a sleepless night preventing the elephants making their way in. One inmate said, “the elephants tried to break open doors and windows; we kept them at bay by creating the Din, but could not light up torches to scare them away for want of enough kerosene.” Similar incidents were reported from two more nearby camps.

As per Kharagpur divisional forest officer Milan Kanti Mondal, flood has hampered movements of the elephants and they were not getting enough food. He added, “Elephants are ‘Very Intelligent’ and whenever they sense that a group of people have assembled somewhere, they know there will be food. The three camps had about 200Kg of molasses whose smell is intoxicating to the animal. They can inhale it from a kilometer away.”

Forest officials confirmed that the group of elephants came from Jharkhand a few months ago and stayed back. ‘Now we are trying to push them back but it is a difficult task to carry out because of the flooding,’ said the official.