Coimbatore: Evaluation of postmortem stories of untamed elephants in Tamil Nadu within the final 28 years has revealed that a lot of the deaths have been reported in March and April.
As many as 210 elephants out of the 940 died within the two months within the Nilgiri elephant reserve (NER), mentioned wildlife marketing consultant G Sivasubramanian, who carried out the examine. He collected postmortem stories of 1,544 wild elephants that died as a result of numerous causes between 1992 and 2019 throughout Tamil Nadu and visited 1,544 spots, the place elephants have been discovered lifeless, within the final six years.
Of the 940 elephants that died in NER, 400 have been males, 529 have been females and 11 have been unclassified.
Sivasubramanian on Friday submitted his findings to the committee shaped by the state authorities to review about wild elephant deaths within the final one 12 months. “Every grownup elephant wants no less than 250kg of fodder a day. In summer season, as a result of lack of inexperienced fodder, they threat dietary deficiencies. So, mortality charge might be excessive,” he mentioned.
Invasive alien species equivalent to seemai karuvelam (Prosopis juliflora) and customary lantana are suppressing progress of native plant species in reserve forests. “We must always take away the 2 species to advertise progress of native crops that elephants choose,” Sivasubramanian mentioned. “Some elephants died after consuming Prosopis juliflora fruits in Sathyamangalam tiger reserve, Hosur and Dharmapuri reserve forests.”
Of the 1,544 elephants that died in Tamil Nadu, 31% or 478 have been calves. “As per the 2017 census, wild elephant inhabitants in Tamil Nadu went all the way down to 2,761 from 4,015 in 2012. Now, the state has solely 3,000 to three,500 wild elephants,” he added.
Sivasubramanian has a PhD in Wildlife Biology Research on Elephant Mortality in Tamil Nadu. For the previous 25 years, he was finding out human-elephant battle and mitigation. He has labored with analysis establishments just like the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Pure Historical past in Coimbatore, Indian Institute of Public Administration, WWF India and the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature.