Amingaon, Sept 6: With the alarming spike in man-elephant conflict in areas under the Kamrup West and East forest divisions, forcing residents to spend sleepless nights guarding their lives and property, experts have suggested that the Forest Department deploy kunki elephants to tackle the issue.

Since the herbivore herd continues to stray into the rural landscape despite being driven away several times, the government should deploy tamed elephants with experienced mahouts to prevent further depredation and human loss.

Well-known forest officer, Dharani Dhar Boro, warned, saying that in the absence of an effective mitigation strategy, the situation will spiral out of control.

“Strong and big-sized kunki elephants will pay off,” Boro said.

Here it may be noted that after raiding crops, the elephants have taken to devouring paddy from the granary of the households.

Talking to this correspondent, Deba Kumar Dutta, a conservation biologist, said that the services of tame elephants would play a stellar role in mitigating human-elephant conflicts.

It is high time the government took the matter seriously and committed to protecting lives, safeguarding crops and conserving wildlife.

Deployment of the trained kunki elephants will help manage the movement of their wild counterparts.

Talking about the behavioural change of the animals, including elephants, after being associated with the plain areas, he said finding the food of the plain areas succulent, they become attracted to the easily available food and it has become very hard to push them back.

Echoing Boro, noted environmentalist Laxman Teron said that given the rampant movement of the pachyderms and consequent crop raiding, deployment of tame elephants is the best way to tackle the problem.

One big female and one big male will be enough to drive away a herd comprising 15 to 20 wild elephants, as wild elephants fear them.

Going down the memory lane, Teron said they took the help of a tame elephant in the Deepor Beel area to safeguard crop land.

“Our strategy worked when elephants used to raid crops in and around the Deepor Beel area. Once they are driven away, they will not stray into human habitats for 2 to 3 months,” said Teron. Notably, residents of several villages have to remain awake throughout the night following the depredation of wild elephants.