Residents of Gelephu in Sarpang continue to struggle to co-exist with elephants. According to the residents, the tuskers have started frequenting residential areas, rummaging through grocery stores apart from damaging crops. Those residing in areas frequented by the elephants say they have to spend sleepless nights due to fear of the tuskers breaking into their homes and threatening their lives.
At around 2:30 yesterday morning, a herd of 12 elephants damaged around a three-acre paddy field in Samtenling Gewog.
And this is nothing new. The residents of Gelephu Thromde have been struggling to keep their crops and properties safe from elephant attacks for the past few years.
Last month, a herd of elephants broke into two grocery stores by breaking the shutter at the Industrial Service Centre of Tashiling Demkhong in the Thromde area. The shop owners claim that the tuskers caused a loss of around Nu 500,000 each.
“Around 100 cartoons of oil had been damaged. The elephants also damaged rice and sugar,” said Sirman Monger, a shopkeeper.
“We had kept primal rice, Rajbogh, and Darbar rice which were damaged. The elephant came twice, on the 12th of July and on the 26th of August,” said Jitendhar Pandit, another shopkeeper.
“The elephant kept on frequenting our place. The day before yesterday, it visited our area and tried to break into our storehouse. As we don’t have any edible items in the store they went to the other store where we keep rice by damaging the shutter. Damage to the properties is fine but we are fearful of the elephants breaking into homes and attacking humans,” said Jambay Chedup, also a shopkeeper.
According to the Gelephu Range officer, elephants see Bhutan as a safe refuge due to habitat degradation in India resulting from mass-scale tea cultivation, blocked routes, and restrictions to access water and forage areas among others.
“The elephants feel threatened when visiting the Indian states. That’s why they take refuge in our area. Later in the night, unable to find food in the wild, they start looking for food in the stores. They have a very strong sense of smell to locate stores with food which are left without any caretakers. They just install CCTV cameras. If they have a caretaker, they could immediately inform us of the appearance of wild elephants. We go to help as soon as we receive calls from the residents,” said Lapchu Tshering, a ranger at Gelephu Range Office.
The Gelephu Range Office recorded close to 500 incidences of human-elephant conflicts between 2020 and August this year.
Karma Wangdi, Sarpang
Edited by Phub Gyem
