Wild Elephants Terrorize Bahundangi, Nepal Residents

Jhapa. Mid-June is the main time for farmers to sweat it out in the fields to harvest the year's grain. However, residents of Bahundangi, Mechinagar-4 in Jhapa are currently plagued by worries about saving their lives and property rather than the rush of paddy transplantation.

Wild elephants, including calves, coming from India have started gathering in the village during the day, forcing the residents here to live in fear. Herds of elephants, numbering 40 to 50 daily, sometimes return to India and sometimes stay in the tea gardens and bushes of Bahundangi all day. Local residents say that since elephants with calves are more aggressive, there is a fear of when an untoward incident might occur in the village.

Due to the terror of elephants, parents are unable to send their children to school. The education of children has been affected by the fear of encountering elephants on the way. Farmers are abandoning paddy cultivation in the June mud and are spending their days chasing elephants, risking their lives. Local youths, villagers, and police administration teams are trying to drive the elephants hiding inside the tea gardens to safer places away from human settlements by blowing sirens and using various methods, but this effort has proven to be 'short-term'.

Ward Chairman of Mechinagar-4, Arjun Karki, said that the local government and security forces are continuously deployed in the field for the safety of the citizens. He said, "We are driving the elephants away from settlements and tea gardens towards India by blowing sirens with the help of local youths, Nepal Police, and Armed Police. This problem cannot be solved by the local level's efforts alone; the federal government must take concrete steps for this."

Nilkantha Tiwari, a local resident of Bahundangi who has been facing the problem for a long time, expressed his anger and sorrow, saying, "We submitted a memorandum through the Chief Minister and Chief District Officer to the Prime Minister as well, requesting intervention for control, as it has become difficult to save life and property. But there was no hearing."

The conflict between Bahundangi and elephants has been going on for decades. It is a natural route (corridor) since ancient times for elephants to travel from India's Assam and West Bengal to Nepal's Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve. Due to the expansion of human settlements and deforestation, the elephants' path has been obstructed, leading them to enter villages.

The electric fencing, built at a cost of millions in the border area to stop elephants, is dilapidated in many places, and elephants have already found new ways to enter the village by pressing the wires with tree branches or felling poles. Similarly, the lack of sufficient food for elephants in the forest area (bamboo, 'siru', banana) and the availability of stored grains or paddy in the village attract them towards the village.

This problem cannot be solved by merely blowing sirens or chasing them away for a short time at the local level. For this, it is necessary to manage the old elephant corridor through 'cross-border' coordination between the governments of both Nepal and India. In the immediate term, if the local administration does not repair the fencing, maintain high security alertness in the affected areas, and guarantee appropriate compensation to the farmers, a humanitarian crisis may arise in Bahundangi.