Six elephant calves named Soni, Tikla, Deepa, Sikom, Hamren, and Tinku have been relocated at Manas National Park from the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation at the Kaziranga National Park.
The six calves hand raised at the conservation are the first initiative by the Assam Forest Department, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Wildlife Trust of India, with the support of the Bodoland Territorial Council (the Manas National Park falls under BTC) to translocate the elephant calves.
The calves were looked by their keepers at the conservation centre where they were bottle fed by vets. They were transferred to Manas National Park to reach there by early morning at 4 am. The animals were translocated at night, as the stress level of the animals is usually high during the day.
Before being left in the core forest area to fend for themselves, the calves will first be kept within a large but limited forest fenced area under surveillance for acclimatization, a crucial step in the rehabilitation process, before being released in the deeper forest.
The calves were initially rescued from different places and situations. Three of them were rescued from tea garden areas, two were victims of man elephant conflicts and one was rescued from a flood situation. “After the calves were rescued, they were introduced to each other and taken together for walks inside the forests at Kaziranga so as to facilitate social bonding. Now they will have to become independent of their keepers inside the fenced forest area at Manas — which may take more than a year,” said Sashanka Barbaruah, the manager, communications, Wildlife Trust of India.
The six calves ranging from there to six years include two males and four females. Of them three have been fitted with radio collars to trace them and understand their behavoiur while adapting to the new environment.
The translocation of elephant calves to Manas National Park is a part of the strategy to renew the former glory of the National Park which is currently under the watchful eye of the UNESCO team so that it can retain its title of the World Heritage Site after being denounced of it and being demoted to World Heritage Site in Danger due to large scale destruction of the park when local terrorist has destroyed the bio diversity of the park
A project called Rhino Vision : 2020 is also underway at Manas National Park, where the One Horned Indian Rhinoceros species are being transferred to the park from Kaziranga National Park and Porbitaro Wildlife Sanctuary.
