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| | Just like humans revise their eating habits, the elephants also do. A new study on elephants in West Bengal has shown elephants now prefer food crops instead of the forest fodder and even remember the specific months of the crop when it's harvested for satisfying their taste buds. In a joint effort of Ministry of Environment and Forest, West Bengal Forest Department and Indian Institute of Sciences (IIS) six different groups of elephants were monitored for a period of three years through global positioning system in Buxar forest reserve of West Bengal. "A radio collar was installed in the leader and the movement of the entire group was monitoring using the satellite system," said Professor S Sukumar of IIS, Bangalore. The findings of the India’s first study of its type shows elephants’ fierce movement during the months of May and November, the harvest season for maze and paddy respectively. "They (elephants) deliberately raid the crops as they find the taste of food crops better than the vegetation in forests," Professor Sukumar said. To quench their taste some elephants groups travelled to 1,000 kilometres in search of the food crop, which was then devastated. Tracing the fields is not difficult for the elephants as they remember the smell of food they want to eat. An indication of this was that only during months of harvest - May and November - they travelled long distances. "The elephants left even thick forest full of fodder food for them in search of the food crops," he disclosed. For the elephants, tracing food crops had not been a difficult task as forests in north and south Bengal are fragmented with agricultural fields moving into the forest area. The study, Sukumar says, can check the human-animal conflict as it was found that elephants refer a specific corridor and rarely deviate from it. AN Prasad, director, Project Elephant, said the study helps in understanding the movement pattern of elephants and would be helpful in combating animal-human conflict. As per the figures of Project Tiger, there are over 300 incidents of crop raiding by elephants and in the recent past many such incidents have been reported from Uttarakhand. The study also nullifies the notion that only a few elephants are crop raiders. "All of elephants under monitoring were found to be raid crops," Sukumar said, while adding that their movement depended on where they found their food.
Email auhtor: chetan@hindustantimes.com |
