Elephant calf rescued By A Staff Reporter GUWAHATI, Jan 7 – After two days of trying, Forest personnel today managed to rescue an elephant calf from inside the Anchang Wildlife Sanctuary on the outskirts of the city. The calf, a one-month-old female, is now recuperating at the Assam State Zoo.
The calf, together with her mother, was apparently abandoned by the herd after the mother had suffered a serious leg injury, resulting probably from an accidental fall. The calf had no signs of injury but was extremely weak as it had not been able to feed on mother’s milk for several days.
“We got information about the mother and the calf from some local people a couple of days back. However, it took a while to rescue the calf because of the hilly terrain and also because of the fact that the herd remained within the vicinity of the area,” Surajit Dutta, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Guwahati Wildlife Division, said.
Dutta said that operations to rescue the mother would continue. “It is going to be a difficult task but we will carry on with our efforts to rescue the mother as well,” Dutta said.
Dutta said that the herd had probably abandoned the animals four-five days back. However, the herd is still within some distance, which is making rescue operations difficult.
Of late, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of wild animals in need of rescue – be it straying leopards into the city’s human settlements or elephants suffering injuries both inside and outside their habitat. The rescue operations, however, have been seriously constrained by the abysmal infrastructure at the disposal of the Guwahati Wildlife Division.
“Going by the spurt in animal injuries in recent times, we are in urgent need of more departmental elephants, well-equipped carriage vans, tranquillisers, cages, regular vets, etc. But none of these facilities is available in the division,” Dutta said, adding that the prevailing situation was not conducive for prompt and swift rescue operations.
Last year the Forest Department did not succeed in rescuing an injured elephant at Anchang under similar circumstances.
Even in this particular case, the Forest personnel had to use domestic elephants for the rescue act. “We took elephants from Baba Khan, who owns some elephants and is a wildlife lover. Without his help, the rescue operation would have been more difficult,” Dutta said.
Given the intensifying man-animal conflict throughout the State, the Forest Department must be equipped with the necessary infrastructure to conduct efficient rescue operations. “While it is difficult to approach injured animals, the lack of equipment makes our task far more arduous,” Dutta said.
Guwahati, the capital city, boasts over a dozen reserve forests, two wildlife sanctuaries and a Ramsar Site wetland, sheltering a wide range of flora and fauna – something rarely to be seen in such close proximity of a metropolis anywhere in the world.
