In a shocking incident in Nagarhole Forest Reserve, an elephant attack led to the death of the Director of the reserve. S Manikandan, IFS officer and director, Nagarhole forest reserve had visited the reserve to assess the area after a ravaging fire in the forest area. While there, an elephant charged at and gored him while he was talking on his mobile. The staff and officials were not carrying any weapons during this visit. Wildlife experts opine that this unfortunate situation could have been prevented if the ground staff had carried out certain protocol measures. There was no thorough perambulation of the fire-ravaged forest before the director’s visit, necessary to detect the presence of elephants in the aforesaid area. The rangers accompanying Mr Manikandan were not carrying any weapons and also fled away when the tusker charged its attack. The body was sent for postmortem and then brought to Aranya Bhavan, Mysuru for district officials to pay homage to their senior before his final journey.
– As Reported by Indian Express
SAEVUS regrets and mourns the passing away of S Manikandan, an inspirational leader and conservationist.
Caterina
After suffering from really bad slug attacks over several years the question answered itself for me. I tried almost every suggestion from the Internet and none of them worked well enough to be a solution. Since I live in the middle of farm land a local farmer pointed out that every field around me is dosed in slug pellets. My 20 or 30 square metres of vegetable beds would pale into insignificance compared to the hundreds of acres treated. I simply got the most powerful slug pellets I could and used them. I saw no obvious signs of wildlife suffering. A local wildlife expert where I was volunteering said he had observed birds hunting for insects and worms on the ground treated with slug pellets avoiding the pellets and explained to me that our type of birds that I have in the garden won”t eat a slug pellet when they are looking for insects and worms. They also won”t eat an ill or dead looking slug, they are in fact smarter than that. I see no point in using a treatment that isn”t going to be effective, that will only mean you have to use it again. I subscribe to, “if you are going to do something, like kill slugs, then at least do it welland actually kill them. If you are going to kill slugs then the moral question about killing wildlife has already been made, just go ahead and do it well. If you don”t want to risk deaths to wildlife then don”t use pesticide. I see it as a binary decision, not one of degrees of death.