Elephant dies while trying to cross railway fence near Nagarhole

Mysuru, Dec 15: A male elephant trying to cross over the railway fence met with a tragic end in Karnataka's Nagarhole National Park on Saturday.

The 42-year-old wild tusker, was chased away by villagers for attempting to return to the Veerahosahalli range of the national park when it came across the railway fence and attempted to scale it.

Acoording to the reports, the elephant got stuck with the iron made railway fencing and unfortunately couldn't manage to extricate itself from it and lost its life. His body was found dangling between the iron barricades.

The tusker which was around 42 years old had entered human habitation and raided an agricultural field the previous night, the report said, adding that the animal was being chased out of the village, but could not get into forest, over the fence.

An IFS Officer Praveen Kaswan has tweeted and asked the reasons where we are helping these wild animals with making such barricades or is it an attempt to create hurdles for the wild animals.

The railway fence is first-of-its-kind in Nagarhole wildlife reserve was built in an attempt to check man-animal conflict, in villages bordering the forests in 2015.

The project envisages erecting rail fence at a length of 33 km of the forest boundary in the first phase for which Rs. 212 crore has been sanctioned by the State government.

The rail fence project will cover the entire forest boundary around wildlife zones in the State but primarily around Bandipur and Nagarahole where human-elephant conflict is the highest.