COIMBATORE: Around 60 people, including animal activists, environmentalists and general public, petitioned the district collector on Monday to stop the plan to make
Chinna Thambi
a kumki.
They demanded that he be recaptured and released back into
Thadagam Valley
or
Anaikatti
, which used to be his home. They said a wild
elephant
like Chinna Thambi should not be “tamed” and “kept in captivity”.
The city witnessed “save Chinna Thambi” protests for the third consecutive day. Responding to a call for support to save the wild elephant, many people, including tribals from Anaikatti, stood along the entrance to the district collectorate holding posters stating “Save Chinna Thambi”.
“Chinna Thambi is a wild elephant meant to be in the wild. He should be captured and placed inside a wooden crate and tamed to be a kumki. We have seen what they did to ‘Masili,’ returning him to the forest in such a weakened state,” said honorary state animal welfare office and animal welfare board of India member, Kalpana Vasudevan.
“Why should he suffer by not being given proper food for 100 days and forced to listen to commands. We can instead create a dense forest, making available everything an elephant desires and release him into it,” she said. “If the forest department is short of funds, we can help them,” she added. “Or they can resort to continue chasing him back into the forests,” she said.
Animal activists said it was the encroachment by brick kilns that was leading to Chinna Thambi entering human habitation. “Most of the Anaikatti area falls under elephant corridor. So you create brick kilns and trenches and deprive him of using his habitat, he does not have an option but to take a different path,” said Mini Vasudevan of Humane Animal Society.
“Chinna Thambi does break our windows and create holes in our roofs when he puts his trunk inside to take our food. But he is so smart that he will take the rice without even overturning the vessel and knows where the vessel is and knows where a stove is,” said a tribal women, Ponnamma Rangaswamy, who claims she has seen the elephant eye to eye. “All he needs is food which includes rice, fruits, vegetables, bananas and sugarcane. He just eats and leaves. We worship him,” she adds.
A Joshua, a social worker and school teacher in Anaikatti, said like U Sagayam studied illegal granite mining near Madurai, there should be a committee to study illegal sand mining by brick kilns in the area, many of whom have encroached forest areas and elephant paths.