Palakkad: The forest department has launched a novel scheme to plant fruit- bearing trees and dig water holes in the core areas of forest to stop the ongoing man-animal-conflict in the district as the wild animals, particularly elephants, are straying frequently to human habitations in search of fodder and water.
The Walayar forest range has already raised 5,000 saplings of jackfruit, mango, papaya and ‘njaval’ in two nurseries in association with the Velancheri forest protection committee under the ‘Green India’ project of the Union ministry of forest and environment.
The planting will likely start this month as the forest officials are waiting for the date of forest minister K Raju to inaugurate this unique scheme.
Walayar section forest officer M Shajahan said that the saplings are ready for planting. They have to be planted during this southwest monsoon season. More saplings will be planted in Walayar forests in the second phase of the programme, he said.
So far this year, four persons were killed by wild elephants in Malampuzha – Kottekkad – Pudussery – Walayar forest areas alone. The wild elephants are on rampage in Mundur, Kottekkad and Malampuzha areas for the last many months attacking local people and destroying agriculture crops.
Though the forest department had put up electric fencing at Pannimada and Arangottukulumbu to prevent the wild animals from entering the human settlements, it has not yielded the desired result.
The forest department officials said an adult elephant requires 250 kg of food every day and it wanders for more than 12 hours in the forest for it.
The decline in the monsoon rains resulted in the drying up of water sources and green fodder, especially in the 40-km-long unique Palakkad gap where the rocky hillocks have little tree cover.
Shortage in the rainfall has affected the forest eco-system and the temperature too has been rising, making it difficult for peaceful existence of wild animals inside forest.
This has forced the wild elephants to move out of the forests in search of fodder and water to the nearby human settlements, resulting in the man-animal-conflict. Sometimes the elephants turn killers as the local people attack them to drive them away from their settlements and agriculture farms.