Experts call for elephant-friendly ramps
The Hindu
Demand comes after a tusker got stuck in Mahanadi in Odisha and perished after failing to move out
After an elephant recently got stuck in the swollen Mahanadi river in Odisha and perished after failing to move out, environmentalists have demanded animal-friendly public infrastructure.
“We have observed that the trapped tusker had made at least two attempts to climb out of the river by walking to the end of the barrage spillway and the shore towards a suitable slope,” said Biswajit Mohanty, who heads the Wildlife Society of Orissa, an environmental pressure group that works on elephant conservation.
“Unfortunately, for more than 100 feet, there is a sharp straight and tall concrete wall to protect the river bank from scouring, which prevented the elephant from climbing. Had there been an eight feet concrete or stone ramp, the elephant could have climbed up,” he said.
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When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.