Bhubaneswar, Jan. 23: Authorities of the Chandaka Dampara Wildlife Sanctuary have decided to dig new trenches around the reserved forest area to check intrusion of elephants into human habitations.
A male elephant last night entered Lumbini Vihar in the Chandrasekharpur police limits and also strayed into Rental Colony on the previous night. Though the forest officials drove the animal back into the forest on the same night, residents of several pockets at Chandrasekharpur, Nayapalli, Bharatpur and Baramunda are still living in fear.
Divisional forest officer of the wildlife sanctuary Manoj Mohapatra said: 'The milkmen community, who are staying illegally in the government colonies and on encroached land along the boundary of the sanctuary, are damaging the walls and trenches, so that they can come inside the forest area to graze their cattle and buffaloes. It gives the elephants an easy passage to sneak into the colonies nearby.'
The senior wildlife official, however, said the elephants were not venturing into human settlements, but it was just the opposite. The human beings have entered the territories of the elephants.
To explain his point, he said an elephant, which came near the foothills of Sikharchandi on December 29, was actually roaming around its traditional corridor that was not inhabited by people even 15 years ago.
A male elephant had also caused panic at Ekamrakanan on December 22 last year. It had entered the park on December 10 and damaged it. The animal had also damaged around 132 exotic palm trees. Most of them were imported from foreign countries.
On the first day, it entered the Regional Plant Resource Centre and destroyed a portion of the banana plantations inside thepark.
In 2010, two elephants had unleashed a reign of terror inside the centre's premises for days.
The authorities had to issue a notice to the public as residents of IRC Village, Nayapalli, Jaydev Vihar, Ekamra Villa, VIP Colony and Rental Colony frequent theparkfor morning and evening walks. Theparkportion of the Regional Plant Resource Centre is popularly known asEkamrakanan.
Environmentalist Bijay Mishra on man-animal conflicts said: 'There should be a proper balance between development and wildlife protection. The state government should restrict real-estate development around Chandaka and Nandankanan. In the past, there was a restriction on giving building plan approval within 1km of Nandankanan, but now it is nowhere applicable. So, if development takes place so fast near the reserved forest areas, conflicts are bound to happen between human beings and elephants.'
