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Chennai, Oct 29 (IANS) Wild elephants are increasingly wandering into human settlements in Coimbatore forest division, leaving a trail of destruction in fields and killing people.
Over the past ten months, elephants have ventured out of the reserve forests nearly 5,000 times, attacking standing crops on 690 occasions and killing ten people – a stark reminder of the deepening human-elephant conflict in the region. Spread over 320 square kilometres, the Coimbatore Forest Division is home to over 300 elephants.
Forest officials admit that it is almost impossible to predict their movement into human settlements due to the vast and fragmented terrain. With crop losses rising and villagers living in fear, the forest department is now betting big on early warning technologies to monitor elephant movements and alert people in real time.
A senior wildlife warden said that although AI-powered and thermal imaging cameras can significantly reduce conflicts by tracking elephant movements and issuing timely alerts, the high cost remains a major hurdle.
“Many such incidents can be prevented by installing intelligent monitoring systems that detect elephants and send alerts to both farmers and field staff. But we are struggling to expand the technology due to budget constraints,” he said.
In previous years, forest officials had used SMS alerts and loudspeaker announcements to warn residents in areas vulnerable to elephant intrusion. However, a forest ranger said the system often fails.
“Whenever an alert was issued, people from nearby areas would gather enthusiastically to see the elephants. This created crowd and made it difficult for the staff to handle the situation,” he said.
District Forest Officer N. Jayaraj said the department has already installed thermal and optical cameras at Madukkarai, Maruthamalai and Thadagam for 24×7 surveillance.
“A dedicated team monitors these cameras, and alerts are immediately sent to field officers when elephants move out of the forests. It is not possible to cover the entire 320 sq km area, so we are identifying high-conflict hotspots for targeted deployment,” he said. D. Venkatesh, chief conservator of forests and field director of Anamalai Tiger Reserve, said the movement of elephants has increased rapidly in all the seven ranges of Coimbatore division in the last five years.
He said, “We are working with the division to introduce modern, technology-based solutions for early detection and prevention. A complete early warning system should be operational within the next few months.”
–IANS
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