Forest officials cremate the elephant that was hit by a train on Monday at Goodhope Tea Garden in Jalpaiguri. Picture by Diptendu Dutta

Siliguri, May 30: More elephants and bison are expected to meet their end on the death track of north Bengal.

A day after three elephants and one bison died after being hit by trains on the Siliguri-Alipurduar route, the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) authorities said there was little they could do to address the situation.

?It is not possible for us to keep the speed limit to 30-40 kmph, as specified by the forest department,? T. Rava, chief public relations officer, NFR, told The Telegraph. ?Hundreds of passengers will have to suffer inconveniences due to massive delay in train timings. Our services will be badly hit.?

?Also, given that accidents like these are not common, it is not feasible for us to keep the trains at a slow speed for the entire stretch throughout the year,? he added.

In 2002, the green bench of Calcutta High Court had given its approval to the railways to go ahead with the conversion of the 120-km stretch of rail track from metre to broad gauge on condition that it would adhere to the guidelines of the forest department.

With reference to case number PIL/WB No 13220 (W) of 2000, the high court had said in its judgment: ?We hope and trust that the railway administration will?see that the peace of wildlife is least disturbed.?

Before the commissioning of the conversion, an expert committee of Project Elephant, a project of the central government?s ministry of environment and forests, had made a recce of the entire rail stretch, based on which they had tabled certain guidelines.

Based on that, the forest department had made a series of recommendations, some of which were as follows:

lIdeal speed to be 20 kmph; otherwise 30-40 kmph along the entire stretch

lCautioned driving as defined by the railways

lVinyl-painted/ fluorescent boards to be placed in the elephant-prone areas and drivers to be briefed about it properly

lIntensive sensitisation of drivers

lFiling up of the trenches along the tracks

But even three years after super-fast trains began plying on the broad-gauge track, NGOs and senior forest officials allege that the railways have turned a complete deaf ear to the dos and don?ts. Other than the innumerable small animals, of which there is no official count, 10 elephants and six bison ? Schedule-I species both ? have been crushed to death in the past three years. The count includes those killed in the last 48 hours.

?In the mud-slinging between the forest departments and railways, it is the wildlife of the region that is suffering,? said Animesh Bose, the founder coordinator of Himalayan Nature and Adventure Foundation.?