Human-elephant encounters are likely to result in more human deaths with jumbos increasingly entering villages in search of food, warn wildlife experts. Experts on Thursday expressed concerns about the situation in Odisha, where 750 human casualties have been recorded in such encounters over the past eight years.
“In the last six weeks, human-elephant conflict has been raging in all elephant-bearing districts with more elephants entering villages in search of food. We could probably see more human casualties in 2021-22 than in 2020-21, when 106 human deaths and 119 injuries were recorded,” said Biswajit Mohanty, secretary, Wildlife Society of Odisha (WSO).
