Elephants in National Park Betla kept the deer poachers at bay this Holi festival said sources.
A herd of nine elephants including three baby elephants is present in National Park Betla where there is a good population of deer too and in this mass festival Holi deer becomes most vulnerable to poaching.
Sources said the herd of elephants acted as protective cover to deer since a herd of elephant if it has baby elephant too is most aggressive and gets into assault mode at once and this may have kept the deer poachers at bay. Deer is comfortable with elephants and so is the case with any other wild life. Sources said it is only the leopard and tiger’s prowl that runs fear among the herbivores.
Sources said the poachers / hunters fear most the elephants and National Park Betla’s elephants have a notoriety for chasing anyone who dare come to them per chance or by deliberation.
Chief conservator of forest cum field director PTR M P Singh told The Pioneer on Tuesday March 14 ‘I came across a herd of 9 elephants in this park last night and the herd has three baby elephants too.
I have reasons to believe that these elephants have shooed away the poachers/ hunters also since no one remains any sure from which corner of this park the elephant will emerge and once it is before you the common wisdom is keep silence, do not panic and retreat safely without making any provocation to the jumbo’.
He said ‘ Till March 14 evening there is no report of any poaching /hunting of deer as two more days after Holi is dangerous.’
He said there will be no let up in the vigil day and night. He agreed that officers are away celebrating Holi with their families.
However M P Singh had also other reasons to cite to have poaching/hunting free park in the big day of Holi here when he said volunteers drawn from Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) like NCS, Tiger Friends Wild India etc patrolled the park along with the PTR personnel and he himself did late night rounds of the park .
Singh said ‘We took with us two of our specialised sniffer dogs and these sniffer dogs were even taken down to village haat in Satbarwa to sniff out any sale of deer meat there’. Satbarwa village haat is the rendezvous of sale of deer meat.
Stopping poaching is not a one man job but for this the whole population of human beings living in and around this PTR will have to be up and doing reiterated Singh.