The death of a woman from a village near the Gohri range of the Rajaji national park has raised the number of human fatalities in chance encounters with an elephant in the area to two within a week. Two women were killed in chance encounter with a pachyderm in the Ganga Bhogpur Malla and Ganga Bhogpur Talla villages within a span of a week.
A day after the latest death, Rajaji field director SP Subudhi inspected the area along with elephant experts who have elicited focus on the possibility of increased anthropogenic disturbances being responsible for the human deaths. Subudhi told The Pioneer that he will be issuing notices to the State Roadways seeking explanation for operation of heavy commercial vehicles on the Canal Road passing through the national park. A notice will also be served to a factory in the area, seeking explanation about dumping of untreated effluent in Rajaji.
The pachyderm responsible for the death on Wednesday has been identified as a tusker in musth more than 10 feet in height, though the animal responsible for the earlier human death has not been identified. The department has formed teams to prevent fatal encounters between humans and pachyderms in the area.
Subudhi said that the area had not witnessed such incidents in the past nine years though elephants experience musth annually. "The vehicular traffic on the Canal Road has increased considerably and travelers often halt on the roadside. There has been considerable development in the Ganga Bhogpur area in recent years including the construction of a small factory and an ashram. The factory is reported to be manufacturing pickles and releasing the untreated sugary residue in the national park which might also be a factor attracting the pachyderm to this area. "We suspect that the growing human presence and increased vehicular traffic might be irritating the elephant apart from preventing jumbos from reaching the Ganga for water. The elephants can approach the water near the Binj river and near the Dugadda siphon but increased traffic and disturbance caused by human activities might be impeding elephant movement," he said, while stressing that the tusker responsible for the human death on Wednesday is not the tusker which was relocated to Rajaji in 2012 after it killed five humans.