Coimbatore: Wild elephants to be profiled for tracking rogue ones easily

COIMBATORE: Nearly a year after it floated the idea of profiling elephants, the forest department, along with the World Wildlife Fund, is all set to train forest rangers and guards from Coimbatore and Bouluvampatti circles in the process. District forest officer D Venkatesh said, “Once the training is complete and the northeast monsoon ceases, the profiling would begin.” It wouldn’t be, however, any forest range’s main project, but just a form of ongoing data gathering, he said. It was when the exploits of wild elephants Chinna Thambi and Vinayaka were at its peak that the forest department first mulled the idea of profiling all the elephants, including migrants, in the district, as officials thought that would help them come up with a customized way to handle an elephant, based on the animal’s characteristics. Forest officials hope the move would help bring down instances of man-elephant conflicts, which have been on the rise of late, in the district. Deepak Shrivastava, former conservator of forests, said, “For example, if it’s just an elephant that strayed from its pack, we could just chase it towards its pack. If it’s a migratory or seasonal raider, we could ignore it too. However, if it’s a perennial raider, we need to focus more on keeping it inside the forest.” In this method, forest rangers and guards would try to profile every wild elephant that they come across, by jotting down their physical characteristics and giving them an Indian name. This way, when an elephant creates issues even in different parts of a district, it could easily be identified and handled accordingly. The training in profiling elephants would be provided by World Wildlife Fund. It is to be noted that World Wildlife Fund had last year trained staff from Periyanaickenpalayam, Karamadai, Mettupalayam and Sirumugai forest ranges, but progress was not tracked. The training would include teaching forest rangers to first draw an outline of an elephant and then mark specific differentiating characteristics. “The main differentiating characteristics include the length of tail, type of tail hair or brush at the tail end, any marks on its back, number of humps on its back, shape and folds on its ears and shape of tusks, if it’s a tusker,” said D Bhoominathan, landscape coordinator for WWF. He said while many elephants have tail till their knee, some may have a cut tail. “In some cases, tails are of ankle length and there are elephants with tails that reach the ground. There are different types of tail brushes too - some are confined to one side, while others are cut or rough. In the case of ears, there would be a cut, small fold, semi fold or no fold at all. When a ranger spots an elephant, he should look for a couple of these characteristics and try figuring out if it's an elephant seen before or one requiring a new profile creation.” Rangers would also be taught to take pictures - of sides of the elephant, tail and then its front, including its ears. “While long range cameras will help, when there is low light, a binocular will be useful for this activity. While rangers will not go in for profiling, it is something they will do whenever they come across an elephant,” Bhoominathan said. District forest officer Venkatesh said rangers would be taught to manage with their phone cameras and available resources, as they were unlikely to be sanctioned long range cameras, which are made available for tiger census and monitoring, for the project. “However, since elephants are high in number and migratory, it is a long-term project that will take a few years.”