By SANTOSH MOHANTY
The Odisha Forest and Environment department has embarked upon a novel scheme, Animal Intrusion, Detection and Repellant System(ANIDER), being powered by solar energy to stave off Elephant-Man tussle.
Forest officials said the pilot project is being introduced in Athamallik forest region in Angul district and also in Dhenkanal. Earlier, the State's forest wing had introduced a REHAB(Reduce Elephant-Human Attacks Using Bees) project. But, the project was not successful despite several measures taken by the department.
The REHAB project was implemented in different forest locations in the State by placing beehives at different villages situated close to forest to dissuade the pachyderms not to visit the area and destroy life and property. The reasoning behind the project was that jumbos are afraid of humming bees and therefore they will not venture to enter the villages where the beehives in boxes were kept. But, this project failed to click even as eight jumbos and two persons were killed in the past two weeks following Elephant-Man conflict.
Wildlife expert Biswajeet Mohanty said the Odisha forest department must identify the cause behind elephant intrusion into the human habitation and take appropriate measures to solve the problem before introducing projects to combat the menace. Mohanty said shooing away elephants with the help of bees has been successful in Africa but added that it was not successful in Kerala due to several factors.
