Tamed Elephants to Handed Over to Andhra Pradesh to Handle Troublesome Jumbos

Bengaluru: In the past 59 tamed elephants have been handed over to other States by Karnataka to deal with man-elephant conflict situations and to add to the tally about 6 tamed elephants experts in tackling troublesome elephants would be handed over to Andhra Pradesh where man-elephant conflicts has escalated.

The handing over tamed elephants to Andhra Pradesh would be held in front of Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru on Wednesday and Minister of Forests and Environment Eshwar Khandre stated the handing over of tamed elephants to Andhra Pradesh is done as per an agreement among the States of Karnataka-Telangana-Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

Minister of Forests and Environment Eshwar Khandre said handing over tamed elephants to Andhra Pradesh would strengthen relationship between the two States and stated the tamed elephants from Karnataka to Andhra Pradesh will be engaged in driving elephants from straying out of the forests particularly in Chittoor region of Andhra Pradesh and cross over to Karnataka via Kolar resulting in man-elephant conflicts quite often. However, the Minister clarified no tamed elephants having experience of participating in Mysore Dasara festivities will not be handed over to Andhra Pradesh.

It may be recalled here Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan had made a request to Minister of Forests and Environment Eshwar Khandre to hand over a couple of tamed elephants to Andhra Pradesh to mitigate man-elephant conflict. The meeting of Khandre and Pawan Kalyan took place in Bengaluru on August 8 previous year.

However, the decision to hand over 6 elephants to Andhra Pradesh by the Karnataka government drew criticism from former State Wildlife Board member Joseph Hoover questioned the rationale of the State Government to capture troublesome elephants in conflict zones and handed them over to other States and asked the forest officials to come out clearly on their plans to let people know.