A herd of wild Asiatic elephants wander
through a wetlands area near Thakurkuchi on the outskirts of Guwahati, in
India’s north-eastern state of Assam, on June 7,
NEW DELHI (AFP) -
Endangered elephants and tigers are killing one person a day in India as humans
put a growing squeeze on their habitat, according to new government figures.
But man is in turn
killing a leopard a day as the man-animal tussle for space reaches new heights.
India has lost vast
swathes of forests to urbanisation in recent decades, forcing animals into
human-occupied zones.
According to the
environment ministry, 1,144 people were killed in attacks across India in 1,143
days between April 2014 and May this year.
The ministry said 345
tigers and 84 elephants were killed in the same period, mostly in poacher
attacks. Elephants are targeted for their tusks.
Siddhanta Das, the
ministry's director general of forests, said human encroachment into animal
territory was causing the deaths.
"We are running
awareness campaigns to minimise the casualties," Das told AFP.
Elephants accounted
for 1,052 human deaths and tigers 92, according to the figures released to
parliament last week.
West Bengal state
accounted for more than a quarter of deaths. The eastern state has nearly 800
elephants and is also home to famed Bengal tigers.
Last year a herd of
wild elephants went on an hours-long rampage in West Bengal, killing five
people and damaging vehicles and homes before being subdued with tranquilliser
darts.
But tensions are also
mounting elsewhere across the country. An elephant trampled to death four
people, including a 12-year-old girl, in a village in southern Tamil Nadu state
in June.
There have also been
cases of elephants knocking people off scooters.
Most attacks on humans
by elephants take place in so-called elephant corridors which they have used
for centuries but are now being overrun by humans.
According to National
Crime Records Bureau statistics, nearly 950 people were killed in animal
attacks in 2015. But those statistics did not specify the nature of the
incidents.
India has nearly
30,000 elephants and is home to half the world's tiger population with some
2,226 of the big cats roaming its reserves, according to the last official
count in 2014. Both are endangered species.
"Rampant killing
of wildlife is ongoing in India. Hundreds of leopards, tigers and elephants are
killed for their body parts," Tito Joseph of the Wildlife Protection
Society of India told AFP.
Fatality figures for
the estimated 12,000 to 14,000 leopards living in the wild are becoming
alarming, according to a 2015 census.
More than 1,436 of the
animals have been killed since January 2014, according to the WPSI.
There are no figures
on the number of humans killed by leopards, but experts say there are hundreds
each year.
FROM THE DESK OF ANIMAL RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA.
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/elephants-tigers-kill-one-human-a-day-in-india
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