Freight train hits elephants in India; one dead, another gives birth

New Delhi – A female elephant was killed and another pregnant pachyderm injured when a speeding freight train knocked them down while they were crossing a rail track after having a bath and drinking water in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, media reports said Monday.

While one died on the spot, the pregnant injured gave birth to a calf after it too was hit by a Guwahti-bound train. The injured female later crossed the tracks and disappeared in to the jungle.

Divisional Forest Officer, Narayan Mahanta, has been quoted by local newspapers as saying that the rescued newborn was stable and had been shifted to the local zoo.

The injured mother has been spotted and moves were on to tranquilize it in order to medicate it for its injuries.

Northeast Frontier Railway spokesman S S Hajong, quoting local witnesses, said the elephant that got killed apparently put its trunk forward while the goods train was passing that area.

"Local people told us that while a herd of wild elephants which had come to the Deepor Beel (Wildlife sanctuary) for bathing and drinking water was trying to cross the tracks, one of the elephants somehow moved its trunk towards the tracks as the train was passing by," the Indian Express newspaper quoted him as saying.

Herds of elephants come down to the Deepor Beel almost every day, prompting the railways to run trains in the area at just 10 km per hour.

Sunday's elephant was the sixth victim of trains in Assam in the past three months. While four elephants including two calves were mowed down by a speeding train between Diphu and Doldoli stations in Karbi Anglong district in central Assam on January 2, one male elephant was killed by a train near Hojai in Nagaon district on December 22.

Assam incidentally accounts for about 37 per cent of the total elephant deaths, the highest in India, caused by trains in the country, followed by West Bengal, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand.

India is home to an estimated 25,000 wild elephants, although their number has dropped to half in the last two decades mainly due to poaching, shrinking space for movement and urbanization of forest land.

The country has identified 88 dedicated elephant corridors. Many of them are yet to take shape.

The World Land Trust (WLT) is working with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) to safe-guard traditional elephant routes as corridors where the elephants can move safely between national parks and other protected areas. But it is facing increasing protests from villagers and others who see this as usurping their land in the increasing animal-human habitat conflict.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/311849,freight-train-hits-elephants-in-india-one-dead-another-gives-birth.html.