Centre begins probe into death of 10 elephants in MP’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve

“The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has constituted a team to investigate the death of ten elephants in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh. The team is conducting an independent enquiry in the matter,” said a statement issued by the union environment ministry.

Prime facie, there are indications that the elephants died due to toxin poisoning. This is being attributed to the Kodo millet crop they raided and consumed.

Prior to the Centre’s decision to initiate a probe through WCCB, the Additional Director General of Forests (Project Tiger and Elephant) and Member Secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority, had already visited the tiger reserve on Friday along with the authority’s Nagpur officials.

Earlier on Tuesday, patrolling staff at the tiger reserve initially found four elephants dead in the Salakhaniya beat of Khitauli and Pataur core ranges. Six other pachyderms were also found in a critical state. By Thursday, the death toll mounted to 10, of which one was male and the rest all females. “Further, amongst the 10 dead elephants, six were juvenile/subadults and four adults,” an environment ministry note stated.

The postmortem of the elephants was done by a team of 14 veterinarians. Their viscera has been sent to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh and State Forensic Science Laboratory, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, for toxicological and histopathological investigations.

“The final cause of death shall only be ascertained after through enquiry, detailed Postmortem reports, results of histopathological and toxicological reports and other corroborative evidences. Further, preventive measures are being taken to avoid such incidents and monitoring of other elephant herds in and around Bandhavgarh reserve has been enhanced,” the environment ministry statement added.