Members of six NGOs and environment and wildlife enthusiasts staged a protest at Freedom Park on Saturday alleging that the “callousness and unresponsiveness” of a few senior forest officers has been one of the reasons for the high number of human and wildlife deaths in Karnataka. This followed the death of Arjuna, the tamed tusker who was a star attraction in several Mysuru Dasara processions. Arjuna died during an elephant capture operation in the Yeslur Range of forest on December 4.
“Arjuna’s death is just the culmination of many blunders. A retired elephant was brought out of retirement to capture a wild elephant. The recent death of captive and wild elephants, tigers, and humans can be attributed to the following top causes: unscientific eco-tourism in critical wildlife habitat leading to human animal conflicts; unscientific wildlife capture decisions by the Karnataka Forest Department; deputation of inexperienced veterinarians for the capture operations; unscientific linear infrastructure projects blocking wildlife movement and foraging patterns,” said a petition to the Chief Minister.
“As many 30 farmers and estate workers have been killed by elephants between April and November 2023. Overall, there have been 43 deaths in these eight months, including four due to tiger attacks in Bandipur and Nagarhole. There is an urgent need to seek accountability from senior forest officers,” said a release from Joseph Hoover, Trustee, United Conservation Movement (UCM).
Vinod Jacob from Namma Bengaluru Foundation, said, “I think the wildlife and human conflict is something Bengaluru is seeing very often. We all talk about sustainability, climate change, and green development, but at the end of the day, we cannot do an environmental assessment before touching any project. That is a major reason for human-wildlife conflict across Karnataka. The BDA or BBMP need to align their projects with the forest and environment departments to prevent human and wildlife conflict.”
