Odisha has seen a 50% increase jump in human casualties in encounters with wild elephants in the first three months of 2023-24, with 57 deaths compared to 38 deaths in the same period last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year\u2019s April, May and June, when human-elephant encounters are typically at their peak with the elephants raiding mango, bael and jackfruit orchards, have been the most lethal in past 10 years. The quarter also saw a 26% rise in the number of human-elephant encounters, which resulted in more injuries than ever before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wildlife expert, Biswajit Mohanty said Asian elephants are attracted to food crops because they are more palatable, more nutritious and have lower secondary defences than wild plants. He added crop damage by elephants is the root cause of human-elephant conflicts across states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mohanty said An elephant eats around 200 kg of food per day and a single elephant can destroy a hectare of crops in a very short time and a small herd can decimate a farmer\u2019s livelihood overnight. He added often, the people who suffer these attacks are already economically and nutritionally vulnerable, and the loss of crops and livestock can have grave impacts on their income and food consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mohanty added The sharp rise in human deaths suggests that elephants are straying out of their habitats more often due to lack of adequate forest fodder and a marked shift towards consumption of farms crops and foodgrain stored inside villages. He said another crucial factor is the huge level of disturbance caused by quarries and crushers and night movement of trucks and tractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to reports of the 57 human deaths in the three months, 14 took place in mango orchards, three in cashew plantations, seven when people went out to relieve themselves, seven during village raids, three during crop raids and eight when people ventured into forests to collect firewood, tendu and sal leaves, mahua fruits and mushrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dhenkanal district reported the highest number of elephant attacks, where 14 persons were killed, followed by 13 in Angul, eight in Keonjhar, five in Mayurbhanj and Sambalpur districts each. Of the 13 deaths in Angul district, villagers in Bantala Forest range faced the wrath of elephants the most in the three months, recording 12 encounters in which nine were killed and five injured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year\u2019s April, May and June, when human-elephant encounters are typically at their peak with the elephants raiding mango, bael and jackfruit orchards, have been the most lethal in past 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":479170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Bhubaneswar:\u00a0 57 deaths in encounter with wild elephants in 2023 \n#Bhubaneshwar #WildElephant","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497],"tags":[3011,143476],"yst_prominent_words":[52640,21284,87412,47868,26440,47943,17675,28741,4591,31413,8065,4051,31149,45269],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/07\/02183030\/odisha-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479164"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=479164"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=479164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}