Interaction between steel rails and wildlife has unintended consequences. This must stop
A few weeks ago, an entire family was mowed down by an Indian Railways’ locomotive. No, it wasn't during the action of taking a selfie or a vehicle trying to speed across the tracks or even while crossing the tracks with earphones on, oblivious to an onrushing train. In Assam, a family of pachyderms was run down by a train. As smart as elephants, (animals are likely just behind humans and simians) one should not have expected them to have known any better. And one does not believe that a locomotive engineer would deliberately run over elephants either. But at that night, those on-board the locomotive would have had no idea that they were speeding into five tonne animals until they heard of the impact. As big as elephants are, in a competition between a five tonne elephant and a 100 tonne locomotive, there can only be one winner. It isn't just elephants who were run over by trains. In Gujarat, several lions have been killed by trains and the situation of the national animal, the Tiger, has been no better. While illegal poaching has been taking a massive toll on Indian wildlife, interaction between steel wheels and wildlife has been unusually damaging.
Wildlife experts advocate the removal of railway tracks from national parks but that is not a feasible solution. Several railway lines, that run across national parks in India, connect to remote and disadvantaged communities. like the line where the family of elephants met their end, it connects parts of the North-East that it takes days to reach by road. Stopping the trains is just not possible but a solution needs to be found because this is not acceptable and should not be acceptable, no matter what the financial cost. Then, what is the solutionIJ In many parts of the world, where roadways and railways pass through areas of heavy wildlife, passages have been constructed for wildlife to pass through unscathed either as ‘animal flyovers’ for smaller creatures or as underpasses for heavier animals. Just like the Indian Railways is building flyovers' across India to replace railway crossings where several hundred people used to die annually (and far too many still do), something similar should be done for animals. This will not be a cheap solution and it will not completely stop the needless deaths of animals on the railway tracks, but will definitely have an impact in dramatically reduce the numbers of animals that die. As for the human selfie takers who die trying to take pictures next to speeding trains, well they're beyond help unfortunately.