Arikomban healthy, attempting to integrate with other herds: TN Forest dept

Chennai: Captured wild elephant Arikomban was healthy and trying to integrate with other herds of pachyderms, the Tamil Nadu Forest department said on Sunday.

Ensnared from Theni earlier this month, "the once bewildered and inveterate crop raiding elephant has transformed into an independent elephant, which in the past few weeks has shown remarkable results", an official release said.

"The Forest Department is putting their maximum efforts to get Arikomban to join a nearby elephant herd, but the elephant is quite ambivalent. The forest department has been very assiduous when it came to the acclimatisation of the elephant in the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR)."

"Overall, the elephant is healthy, in great shape and trying to integrate with the other herds of elephants as per the daily monitoring by frontline staff from ground zero in Upper Kodayar," it said.

The pachyderm, known for its love for rice and ration shop raids in Kerala, was tranquilised and then released into the reserve forest area of KMTR, which is spread across Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu.

PTI