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\nAsian elephants are now restricted to just 15 percent of their original habitat.
\nPhoto: 123RF\n<\/p>\n
Indian wildlife officers are hunting a rampaging wild elephant blamed for killing at least 20 people and injuring 15 others in the forests of Jharkhand, villagers and officials said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The elephant, a lone bull, is reported to have gone on the rampage for nine days beginning in early January, creating panic in the rural West Singhbhum district.<\/p>\n
“We are trying to trace and rescue this violent wild elephant that killed so many people,” government forest officer Aditya Narayan told AFP, confirming the toll of 20 dead.<\/p>\n
Children and the elderly are among the dead, as well as a professional elephant handler, known as a mahout.<\/p>\n
But after wreaking a trail of destruction, it had not been spotted since Friday, despite multiple patrols in the area.<\/p>\n
Officials said search teams, aided by drones, are combing dense forest tracts, including a national reserve in neighbouring Odisha state.<\/p>\n
Fear has driven residents of more than 20 villages to abandon their farms or barricade themselves indoors at night, elected village head Pratap Chachar told AFP.<\/p>\n
“A police team, or forest official vehicle, visits in the night to provide essential help to villagers,” Chachar said.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of Indians are affected each year by crop-raiding elephants.<\/p>\n
Asian elephants are now restricted to just 15 percent of their original habitat.<\/p>\n
The usually shy animals are coming into increasing contact with humans because of rapidly expanding settlements and growing forest disturbance, including mining operations.<\/p>\n
As elephant habitats shrink, conflict between humans and wild elephants has grown – 629 people were killed by elephants across India in 2023-2024, according to Parliamentary figures.<\/p>\n
The elephants that pose the most danger to humans are often rogue bulls, solitary male animals enraged during “musth”, a period of heightened sexual activity when testosterone levels soar.<\/p>\n
A former forest official said the elephant was likely in musth, and may now have calmed down and rejoined its herd.<\/p>\n
India is home to the majority of the world’s remaining wild Asian elephants, a species listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and increasingly threatened by shrinking habitat.<\/p>\n
The Wildlife Institute of India last year issued a new estimate that put the country’s wild elephant population at 22,446, a report that also warned of the deepening pressures on one of India’s most iconic animals.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asian elephants are now restricted to just 15 percent of their original habitat. Photo: 123RF Indian wildlife officers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-232042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}