Elephants to get microchip licences
Owners Will Be Asked To Take Unlicensed Tuskers Out Of Mumbai
Archana Sharma.
Mumbai: Elephants in Mumbai will soon have a chip on their shoulders. Within three months, all licensed elephants will be implanted with a microchip behind their left ear. This will help identify all the unlicensed animals as also any new ones brought into the city.
The chip would work better than a licence as mahouts currently show one licence to illegally keep as many as three elephants at a time, said deputy chief conservator, Thane forest division, Sarfaraz Khan. The owners of unlicensed elephants will be asked to immediately take their animals out of the city.
The decision has been taken by the state forest department Thane division, which is in charge of wildlife in Mumbai. Khan told TOI that he has also written to wildlife authorities in Bihar requesting them not to issue transit passes to those who want to take elephants to Mumbai.
The recent, painful death of Laxmi has brought into focus how elephant owners illegally, and sometimes cruelly, use the animals to earn money. Less than two weeks ago, Laxmi was knocked down by a speeding tanker on the Sion-Trombay road.
Dr Kishor Batwe, wildlife veterinarian with the Borivli national park, has taken up the task of microchipping the animals with the help of the Thane forest division. Batwe, who has studied elephant management at Kerala University, said implanting the chip is a minor procedure, but restraining the animal is a gigantic task. “We will take one case at a time. In two to three months, it should be over.”
The authorities plan to search for the animals as well as approach elephant owners.
Because elephant owners keep multiple animals on one licence, the exact number of elephants in the city is also not known. The forest department says that there are only seven, whereas the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says the number could be double that. Khan said, “That’s why we have decided to microchip all the elephants with legal licences.”
BSPCA’s Dr Ashish Sutar, who attended to Laxmi, said microchipping would effectively restrain the entry of elephants into the city and the existing elephants would be controllable. “This is what the NGOs have been demanding,” he said.
JUMBO SCAN: A microchip is an identifying integrated circuit placed under the skin of the animal. The chips are about the size of a large grain of rice. The scanner reads the radio frequency ID unique to every animal. The cost of one chip is Rs 350, but the scanner, which will read all the chips, is expensive at Rs 20,000.
OUT AND ABOUT: This elephant called Ramu was seen begging in the busy Sector 17 in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, on Dussera on Monday. When TOI questioned the mahout, he was evasive and merely said the elephant had come from Uttar Pradesh. Following the recent death of Laxmi, who was hit by a speeding truck in Chembur, animal activists have demanded that elephants not be allowed into cities, where they are forced to beg or join processions. PAWS and BSPCA have said they will file complaints wherever they see elephants treated cruelly, with a view to finally filing a PIL in court. Peta’s Anuradha Sawhney said poachers kidnap baby elephants from forests, even though the animals are protected by law