Kuthiran tunnel causes an unexpected human-wild elephant conflict
The HinduThe opening of the Kuthiran twin tunnels has inadvertently opened doors for human-wild elephant conflict. As traffic on the Kuthiran road through the Peechi-Vazhani Wildlife sanctuary has come down considerably after the opening of the tunnels, wild elephants, hitherto restrained to the Peechi range, have started crossing the road to enter the Machad range, which has been devoid of elephants. “Though farmers here are familiar with the menace of wild boars, deer, peafowl and wild squirrels, we have not faced threat of wild elephants in our area for the past 60 years,” he says. “The crossing over of elephants from the Peechi forests to Machad was predicted even before the Kuthiran tunnel was opened,” says former director of the Kerala Forest Research Institute and wildlife conservationist P.S. But with the diversion of traffic through the tunnel, a new elephant corridor has been formed at Kuthiran,” says Sreedevi Madhusudhanan, Machad forest range officer.
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