With the Karnataka forest department failing to tackle the wild elephant menace in Kodagu, the jumbos which have been running amok across the hill district, has not even spared the famous garden of former MP and Congress leader F.M. Khan.
The wild elephants damaged the garden located at the Balayatrie Estate bungalow at Boikeri on Madikeri-Mysore Road.
Khan, once an associate of former chief minister R. Gundu Rao, was a Rajya Sabha member and close to the late Sanjay Gandhi.
The former Rajya Sabha member was known for his love for gardens and won accolades for maintaining the best garden in Delhi in his MP bungalow.
Back in Kodagu after his controversial political innings, Khan had been nurturing his garden and has been holding annual private flower show since 1998.
Khan has criticised the Karnataka government for not taking steps to tackle the jumbo menace in Kodagu.
Indeed, another instance of human-animal conflict. The forest rangers ought to have diverted and pushed back the herd into their own and familiar habitat.
In fact, when I was with ANI, literally every month, there used to be reports and stories of a wild herd of jumbos making their presence felt in the tea estates of Dooars, Jalpaiguri and parts of Assam as well as the pachyderms entering villages in Jharkhand, Odisha and parts of West Bengal to feed on standing crops.
A couple of years ago, I had also edited a story of a herd entering the Hassan district.
Well, basically, we can’t blame the animals since in the absence of their food, they must have been compelled to foray into human settlements.