All set to catch Madukkarai Maharaj

According to forest officials, the rogue elephant in Madukkarai forest frequently enters human habitations and damages houses. The elephant trampled a forest department employee to death a few months ago and it was also a regular intruder in residential areas. This has worried the forest officials who have decided to catch the animal alive. 

I Anwardeen, Conservator of Forests, Coimbatore Circle, said that they were making all the arrangements to tranquillize the animal. “If we could spot the animal, surely we will catch it,” he said. Speaking to DTNext , Periyasamy, District Forest Officer (DFO), said that they were gearing up to tranquillize elephant. 

“We sense that the troubled elephant has been mingling with a group of pachyderms. So we are trying to separate it. Further, we will try to catch the animal as fast as possible and we have formed teams who have been assigned work to incapacitate the elephant,” he said. 

When asked about possibility of the pachyderm being caught on Friday, the DFO said that they had to first locate the animal. “Translocation can be swift after we spot the elephant,” he explained. Senthil, a Forest Ranger of Madukkarai, said that a total of 11 teams were involved in the operation and Dr Boominathan from World Wide Fund for Nature was overseeing all the arrangements. “Even on Friday morning, we did a mock drill by having four kumki elephants and all the stakeholders observed it.” 

Meanwhile, wildlife activists have expressed concern over the operation. “We should give definite time for such animals so that there can be no issue, and it is not good that whenever there are man-animal conflicts, we should follow such a mechanism,” said a wildlife activist, adding that cost and manpower use should not go waste.