Assam Forest Department is planning to use technology like installation of sensor-based barriers, construction of overpass and underpass and also mobile information sharing between villagers and forest officials to track the movement of elephants.
This is due to the numerous incidents of the man-animal conflicts that has happened in the past.
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Forest Minister Pramila Rani Brahma, on Thursday informed the State Assembly that solar-powered electric fencing has been erected at vulnerable locations to avoid damage to life and property by depredating pachyderms.
She also said 1,752 houses were damaged in man-animal conflicts in 2016-17, while crops on 634.6 hectares of land belonging to 1,208 families were destroyed. On the other hand, in 2017-18 elephants damaged 1,794 houses and destroyed crops on 1246.1 hectares of land belonging to 2,194 families.
The minister also mentioned some other measures to mitigate man-elephant conflicts, including creation of elephant Anti-Depredation Squad (ADS), deployment of Kunki (trained elephants to monitor the movement of wild elephants and to chase them away from croplands.
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“In each of the elephant corridors, coordination committees have been constituted comprising the representatives of revenue, police, forest and transport departments, PWD, APDCL, Railways and NGOs, with the DC of the area concerned as the chairman, to minimize the conflicts and facilitate information sharing,” she added.