The workshop at Murti. Picture by Biplab Basak

Alipurduar, Feb. 4: Foresters from different parts of eastern India have come together in Gorumara National Park to find out ways to manage “problem elephants”.

Asian Nature and Conservation Foundation, a Bangalore-based NGO, is holding a four-day workshop on man-elephant conflicts at Murti. Thirty-two forest officials, including veterinary officers, from the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa and Bengal are taking part in the meet, which started today.

“Many eastern states, along with the Andaman islands, have elephant-related problems, but the forest officials concerned often do not know how to tackle the situations,” said S.S. Bist, the chief wildlife warden of Bengal, while explaining the need for such a workshop.

Wild elephants often turn problematic when they stray out of forests and start damaging huts, destroying crops and killing people. In the absence of any help from foresters, desperate villagers are forced to resort to illegal means like setting up energised fences, which lead to elephant deaths.

And yet, a state like Bihar, for example, does not even have its own tranquillising team and must depend on Bengal to send its experts at moments of crisis.

Raman Sukumar, the chairman of the Centre for Ecological Sciences in Bangalore, has come to the workshop as an expert. “We are going to show foresters from various states how the animals are tranquillised, what medicines are used to treat elephants, be they wild or trained, and how to frame good elephant management plans,” he said.

Murti has been chosen as the venue for the workshop because Bengal has the best infrastructure to deal with the problems posed by elephants, said the organisers.