By IANS
Lucknow : A large herd of elephants from Uttarakhand has wandered into neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, coincidentally ruled by the Bahujan Samaj Party, whose election symbol is the elephant.
“To be precise, 101 elephants have wandered away from Uttarakhand into Uttar Pradesh,” Uttarakhand chief wildlife conservator C.K. Chandola told IANS over telephone from Dehradun.
Uttar Pradesh chief wildlife conservator D.N.S. Suman said: “Our elephant count has gone up by 219 from a census in 2005 and the latest one now.”
“As against 161 elephants assessed by the Wildlife Institute of India in 2005, today we have 380 elephants in the state.”
Uttrakhand, which boasted of 1,600 elephants in 2005, now has a count of 1,499, according to the official census.
The majority of elephants had crossed over from the Haridwar forest division in the vicinity of the Rajaji National Park on the Garhwal Himalaya foothills.
There is little that wildlife officials can do about the migration of elephants. “After all, animals in general and elephants in particular do not know geographical boundaries. They keep marching in herds according to their food needs,” Chandola said.
He, however, said it was rare for such large-scale migration to take place over a relatively short span of time.