Jumbo found dead, tusks missing

The Pioneer , Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Correspondent : Prithviraj Singh | Dehradun
A 25-year-old male elephant was found dead in Dugadda forest range of Lansdowne Forest Division on Sunday night. Both tusks were missing from the carcass of the pachyderm. This is the third incident of the kind in the past two months at Dugadda forest range in Lansdowne forest division.

Though forest officials have denied any poaching angle in the incidents, they said the penal action was initiated against field employees, including the range officer of Dugadda range.

When asked about the reason of the death as it did not seem to be a case of poaching since the elephant’s body had no injury marks, Lansdowne Divisional Forest officer Nishant Varma said the exact reason was not known.

However, Varma admitted the slackness of his staff in preventing the death of two elephants in the past two months. There was failure on the part of our officers who were responsible for the protection of tuskers. “Show-cause notices have been served to concerned range officer, forester and forest guard. This will be followed by necessary action against them,” informed Varma.

The DFO further said that viscera of the dead elephant were collected for pathological examination by the doctors who conducted post-mortem. Incidentally Varma fumbled when asked as to how doctors failed to unearth real cause of elephant’s death in post-mortem. He ruled out poisoning as cause of pachyderm’s death and said, “poisoning could not be established as the animal had died six to seven days earlier when the carcass was discovered by a local man who subsequently brought it to our knowledge.”

“However, even if there was any chance of poisoning it will be established in viscera report,” said Varma.

Varma admitted that both tusks of the elephant were stolen and forest team could recover only base of right tusk indicating that tusk was sawed down. About another elephant death two months ago, Varma said that it had only one tusk and even that was stolen by some local person. He ruled out poaching here as well.

The DFO claimed that three elephant deaths in the past two months in the same range have put his division on alert. “We have increased patrolling and are trying to rope in retired Army personnel for round the clock vigilance,” said Varma, adding that raids were being carried out at suspected places to recover the stolen tusks and investigation was on to find out real cause of the tuskers death.

 
SOURCE : http://www.dailypioneer.com/207267/Jumbo-found-dead-tusks-missing.html
 


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