Elephant herd enters Bankura
A herd of 52 Dalma range elephants from Jharkhand entered the Bankura forests Monday late night through the West Midnapore jungle corridor.
The Purulia district police will provide updates of the movements and locations of the herds to the people staying in the near vicinity of the elephant corridors through the Sahay app to reduce the chances of possible human elephant conflicts. In recent times, a number of people have died due to stray and wild elephant attacks in the district, including a very recent incident when an aged person was killed by a wild elephant while he was going to his agricultural land in a village in Purulia.
The elephant herd from the Dalma Forest range in Jharkhand comes down the Dalma Hills in search of food and water and invades human habitations resulting in often human-animal conflicts. Some of these elephants stay back and become permanent resident elephants in the forests of Purulia. Incidentally, according to the latest data published, recently by the Union ministry of environment, climate control and forests, Purulia district has registered the highest growth in forest cover in Bengal.
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Not only the locations and movements of the elephants but also the presence of other wild carnivores like Indian Striped Hyenas, sloth bear, golden jackals and leopards will also be provided through the Sahay app with the active assistance and information of the forest department.
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Talking to The Statesman, Abhijit Mukherjee, police superintendent of Purulia has informed that for providing the safety and security of the local inhabitants the Sahay App can become very useful and helpful. “We launched the people-friendly app on 24 December 2022 and within a year about 29,735 people have found it very helpful. The Purulia district police has received over 716 very positive feedbacks from the app users which is very encouraging,” he added.
Not only the Sahay app is very helpful to the local residents but also the tourists who are visiting Purulia find it very much resourceful. Around 4,89,332 people have downloaded the app till November and another 10,332 people from other districts of West Bengal have downloaded the app.
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