The Wildlife Society of Orissa (WSO) has urged the IGF and Director (Project Elephant), Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to form an expert committee to assess the escalating human-elephant conflicts and human tolls and recommend solutions.
WSO secretary Biswajit Mohanty said Odisha has topped in human casualties out of man-elephant conflicts in 2019.
The number of humans killed since April,2019 reached 100 while 102 others were injured, some of them critically in the 177 encounter incidents recorded in the State in 2019. This year till date, on an average, in less than 2 days, a human-elephant encounter is witnessed and in every 3 days a human is killed. Such a high number of human casualties had never been recorded in the past, said Mohanty.
The situation in Odisha is extremely worrying as the situation is now out of control. When we compare this with other States like Karnataka, Assam, Kerala and Tamil Nadu where the elephant populations are 2-3 times that of Odisha, one can see that Odisha’s human-elephant-casualty (HEC) management and mitigation is dismal, he added.
Though an amount of Rs 3.67 crore was spent on consultancy fees for wildlife and conflict management by the State wildlife wing, nobody knows the outcome of the huge expenditure, Mohanty told further.
"We have been raising concerns for the last eight years before the Chief Wildlife Warden and your office about the unhindered mining and quarrying in elephant habitats, the lack of notification of identified 14 elephant corridors, the lack of underpass on roads and train lines, the barbed wire fencing of thick elephant forests all of which are signficant contributors to the raging HEC," Mohanty told, urging to take experienced elephant experts and conservationists in the committee to assess the situation, identify the reasons behind human kills and suggest both short term and long term solutions.