The latest incident of a wild elephant killing a man in Wayanad triggered a new wave of protest in Kerala, with the State Forest department sending a special team to tranquilise the elephant on Sunday.
It has been hardly a week since another elephant, locally called Thanneer Komban, died after being tranquilised and relocated from Wayanad.
The statistics available with the Forest department and other agencies paint a poor picture of affairs in the State. As per the records available with the Forest department, 202 people were killed in the State from 2012 to February 2023 in wild elephant attacks. However, all these deaths did not happen in attacks by wild elephants that strayed into human habitations. A good number of these deaths were in attacks by elephants inside the forests or in forest fringe areas. A case-by-case study based on location was needed to ascertain the cause of each of these incidents, said a forest officer.
