Meet on elephant corridor

KHARAGPUR: A day before the talks on Dalma elephants at Odisha’s Baripada, Bengal forest minister Benoy Krishna Burman met divisional forest officers (DFOs) of Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore at the Hijli forest guest house in Kharagpur. In the meeting, the minister and foresters reviewed the problems the villagers here are facing due to the prolonged stay of the Dalma elephants.The Dalma jumbos have so far killed 20 people in Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore this year, Burman said.
The officials will ask their Odisha counterparts to allow free movement of elephants through their traditional migratory routes. Officials said that Odisha villagers, in particular, are blocking the routes of Dalma elephants either by digging trenches or installing electric fences.
Burman said, “The elephants follow a specific route from Bengal to enter Odisha where they stay a fortnight before returning back to Dalma en-route our state. When they find that their routes have been blocked, they become ferocious and go on a rampage. We are yet to push back 30 Dalma elephants from two herds to Jharkhand.”
Bengal will be represented at Wednesday’s meet by a nine-member forest department team led by the state’s chief wildlife warden Azam Zaidi and additional PCCF Pradeep Vyas. All of them attended the meeting at Hijli along with MLAs from West Midnapore’s Jangalmahal belt. Apart from the Bengal delegation, senior officials from Odisha, Jharkhand and the Centre will also attend the Baripada meet.