Are Infrastructure Projects Driving Elephants to Kill in Ramgarh?

Ramgarh: Driving away wild elephants forcibly from their habitat is not a natural practice. This irritates one of the largest surviving animals on Earth, which are struggling for their basic needs, including food and natural habitat, various experts said on Saturday.

Their comments came after incidents of elephant attacks, which looked like acts of vengeance, as the jumbos are known to have excellent memories, in the last few days in the district claimed at least six lives.




According to the experts, rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, and mega infrastructural projects, along with deforestation, have significantly impacted jumbos’ habitats. They are forcibly driven away, which makes them irritated with the humans.

Nitish Kumar, the divisional forest officer (DFO) of Ramgarh, with additional charge in Bokaro, said that driving elephants away from their habitat is not a natural practice, and this has irritated the elephants.

The rising demand for forest land for industries and infrastructure projects has put pressure on the green cover, and elephants have been struggling for food and thus are moving to the agricultural fields of farmers in villages, another official said.

Jyoti Kumari of the Chitarpur Degree College in Ramgarh said, “Elephant corridors are being destroyed by various infrastructural projects that are being undertaken near natural pathways. The hassle-free movement of wildlife in forests has been impacted.”

According to A K Choubey, a mining expert and a retired Coal India Limited employee, the green cover has shrunk due to the use of such land in industrial and infrastructural projects.

“Projects need to be planned with the minimum requirement of forest land in mind. Ramgarh is one of the highly industrialised districts with coal, steel, iron, and power projects taken up along forest areas, which are the natural habitats of wild elephants,” Sanjay Singh, a social activist, said.

A total of 244 acres of forest land has been acquired for the Ormanjhi (Ranchi) via Gola-Ramgarh, Jaina More (Bokaro) Expressway under the Bharatmala project, which passes through the elephant corridor in Sikidiri (Ranchi) and Chopadaru (Ramgarh).

The Varanasi-Kolkata greenfield 4/6 lane expressway road project passes through Chatra, Hazaribag, Ramgarh, and Bokaro districts, covering a distance of 293 km in Jharkhand. For this mega road project, a total of 760 hectares (nearly 1,877 acres) of forest land has been acquired, a forest official said.

The Gomoh-Daltonganj via Barkakana, Koderma-Ranchi via Barkakana, and Mesra new rail routes also pass through the elephant corridor, which traverses hills and tunnels. The Muri-Barkakana rail route also passes through the elephant corridor. These projects, according to various experts, have created limited space for the elephants, thus leading to a gradual rise in the man-elephant conflict.

Notably, the herd of elephants is still loitering in various places after killing six people, including three women, in the last few days, and the district administration has sounded an elephant alert across the district.

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