Chennai : The Chennai High Court on Friday has sent notices top officials including Coimbatore District Collector, Chief Conservator of Forests and Secretary of Mining Department to reply to a PIL filed before it and with regard to the continued destruction of elephant corridors in Thadagam in Coimbatore.
Chennai : The Chennai High Court on Friday has sent notices top officials including Coimbatore District Collector, Chief Conservator of Forests and Secretary of Mining Department to reply to a PIL filed before it and with regard to the continued destruction of elephant corridors in Thadagam in Coimbatore.
A division bench of Justice M. Sathyanarayanan and Justice N. Seshasayee which heard the PIL today morning sent notices to the said official’s returnable before October 17.
The PIL was filed by a Chennai- based activist Muralidharan, who claimed that the sand mining activities in the Thadagam region was the sole reason behind the rising number of man-animal conflict between wild elephants and humans.
“The brick kilns and their mining of the red sand for bricks have totally destroyed important elephant corridors, used by elephants to migrate to contiguous forest areas... This is resulting in elephants moving into human settlements and damaging crops and humans lives,” said the petitioner in his PIL.
Quoting a report of the Forest Department, the petitioner has said that elephants Vinayagan and Chinnathambi have been moved out of the reserve in 2018 due to sand mining activities
“While around 100 elephants have died between 1999 and 2014, 77 people have been killed by elephants and 61 have been injured between 2011 and 2018. A minimum of 10 to 27 people are getting killed by elephants every year,” the petitioner had said.
The petitioner further requested the court to find out elephant corridors in the region and protect them, like in the Nilgiris.
“The Coimbatore District is covered by 22 per cent forest cover and it is important to keep forest environment safe from destruction by human intervention.” Muralidharan had noted in his petition.