Assam: Wild elephant electrocuted in Golaghat district

A wild elephant died due to electrocution in Assam’s Golaghat district, forest department officials said.

The incident occurred on Sunday night at Letekujan in the Greater Morangi area while locals were celebrating Uruka as part of the Magh Bihu festivities.

“A herd of wild elephants had been roaming around the Morangi locality for the last few months. On Sunday night, one elephant got into contact with a live electric wire near Highway 39 and died on the spot,” a forest official said.

Following the incident, a team of the forest department rushed to the spot and recovered the carcass of the wild tusker.

Also Read: Assam: Signboards to warn of elephants movements put up in sensitive areas

On the otherhand, in a noble gesture to ensure that people know about areas where elephants move around, one of Assam's main biodiversity conservation organisations, Aaranyak, has put up sign boards in certain areas of the state with the intention of warning people of possible elephant movement. 

There have been instances of human casualty when unsuspecting human beings sometimes come to close wild elephants in certain human-elephant conflict (HEC) affected areas in Assam where there has been hardly any practice of putting up warning boards about the possible presence of wild elephants in a particular area.

Such signboards on the roads alerting people about the possible presence of wild elephants moving around in the area, are expected to go a long way in mitigating the conflict and thereby saving precious lives.