Elephant hit by train

Tiger news may be exciting with cub reports and new sightings at higher altitudes. But there is carelessness at lower altitudes for other animals as well.

Is the focus only on tiger conservation and all the resources have been pulled to this cause? A goods train in north Bengal in India ran over 7 elephants killing them. Yes 7 asian elephants have been killed in no time after being hit by a goods train in the Banarhat area of Jalpaiguri district on Wednesday night.

The herd of 7 elephants left four filled on the spot after collision, the remaining 3 died the next day. It seemed like an extended family with including sub-adults and two juvenile elephants.

The forest department has requested to run the train at lower speeds in this stretch but there is always hurry for everyone, and the train driver was no exception. Is running at 70km/hr against the requested 25km/hr going to bring back the elephant family?

A case has been booked against Subhankar Sarkar, train driver. The train runs across the forest areas in Dooars at odd times including night which is the most active time for elephants to feed.

Elephants need to feed around 10% of their body every day. This approximately 100-300kg of food per day which takes about 12-15 hours per day feeding. A rough estimates states that there are only 26,000 Asian elephants in wild in India.

This is not the first incident, three months ago, another elephant was run over and killed by a train near the same spot. Reports are even stating that 30 elephants have died in such collision incidents in the past years.