We don’t often think about how thin the line is between the wild and the commercialised world that we have built. With every developing highway and town development, a path of forest is destroyed or encroached. Somewhere in the middle of it all, animals that have roamed the same routes for generations suddenly find themselves with nowhere familiar to go and end up entering localities inhabited by human beings.One such incident recently happened in Tamil Nadu, and IAS Supriya Sahu, Additional Chief Secretary for Environment, Climate Change, and Forests in Tamil Nadu, and a 1991-batch officer, posted about it on her X account
Photo: @supriyasahuias/ X
Forest officials and veterinarians sent a lost 800kg Gaur bison back to its home
A massive wild gaur had wandered far from where it belonged. As shared by IAS Sahu, the roughly 800-kilogram animal had travelled more than 300 kilometres, across from the forested stretches around Tiruchirapalli all the way to the coastal belt near Pamban.For nearly a month, forest teams followed the gaur as it moved through farmland, roads, and human localities that were unsuitable for the animal of its size and temperament.They first tried guiding it back toward a suitable forest on its own. When those efforts repeatedly failed, the department decided on something it had never attempted at this scale before.
The operation was enormous and had a huge team
Nearly 100 people, including experienced veterinarians and trackers, worked across difficult coastal terrain to execute the operation.IAS Sahu wrote in her post, “Nearly 100 personnel, including expert veterinarians and trackers, worked in challenging coastal terrain to safely tranquilize, transport and release the animal in a Reserve Forest in Dindigul after a 13-hour capture operation and a 9-hour journey.”
Controlling and translocating a Gaur is one of the most challenging tasks
Posting on her X account, she walked through the sequence of events and praised the team. She described the mission as “one of the most complex wildlife operations undertaken in the state,” and noted that translocating a gaur ranks among the most challenging wildlife-management tasks there is.She further added, “his successful operation marks a significant milestone in conflict mitigation and wildlife management, while providing valuable lessons for future human-wildlife conflict situations. Kudos to the entire team”.
