Wild elephants have a 'field day' in Sakleshpur

A herd of three elephants and a calf raided the villages of Janekere and Sattigal in Sakleshpur taluk on Saturday and destroyed crops worth lakhs of rupees.

The elephants were first spotted on the bank of River Hemavathi in Vadur village Friday evening. Past midnight, they raided Janekere and broke the wooden gate of Swamy’s house and entered the courtyard.

They uprooted a few coconut trees and smashed a plastic drum into pieces.

They destroyed the haystack and barged into the coffee plantation belonging to Shridhar. More than 100 coffee plants, banana and areca trees were destroyed.

Coffee, areca plantations

From there, they proceeded to Sattigal, via Bagarahalli and had a ‘field day’ at the coffee and arecanut plantations belonging to Kollahalli Ibrahim and Gopalashetty.

 Large-scale loss has been reported on Ibrahim’s plantations, where the jumbos destroyed coffee plants, Silver Oak trees, pepper creepers and ginger plants.

The herd next then camped at Gopalashetty’s farm till evening and damaged plants and trees worth lakhs of rupees.

Futile attempt

Range Forest Officer Ratnaprabha and staff visited Gopalashetty’s farm and tried to scare away the beasts. But the adamant elephants did not budge.

Elephant rampage has also been reported from Saragalli village of the same taluk, wherein, two pachyderms raided the paddy fields and coffee plantations belonging to Sinojirao, Puttojirao, Shivojirao, Kabbinojirao and Venkatesh, with losses running upto lakhs of rupees.