Elephant calf rescue

Saravanan (Junior Research Fellow, ANCF) came across this small family consisting of a young calf, a mother and a sub adult along the banks of the river Cauvery. He observed that the mother and young calf did not move away from the banks. The mother was standing still and a sub adult which was grazing in the jungles nearby would charge out every now and then when the calf called out. It was obvious that the mother elephant was seriously ill. Saravanan managed to contact Karthikeyan (committee member, KANS) and passed on the details of the situation. Karthikeyan got in touch with the DFO and by the time the FD team reached the place next day, the mother had died sometime in the night and the sub adult was nowhere to be seen. The young calf however was standing by its dead mother when we reached the scene.
Sentries were posted all around the area in the fading light, to keep at bay the missing sub adult or any stray herds in the area. The team set about carrying out the postmortem of the dead mother amidst regular bang of fire crackers. Meanwhile to spare the already traumatized calf from any more pain, it was removed from the scene. It took all the strength of three grown men and Karthik to coax and drag the calf towards the jeep parked about half a kilometer away. As soon as we reached the place where the Anchetty stream joins the Cauvery, the little calf greedily fell upon the water and drank for a good 15 minutes.
The calf had gone hungry for over a day and day and had probably not even had a drink of water. The calf was then shifted overnight to Vandalur zoo in Chennai, where it appears to be doing well. However it is obvious that the forest department at least in this region is neither equipped nor trained to deal with such situations.

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Sanjeev Kumar S.R
Vice President
Kenneth Anderson Nature Society.