JULY 10,
2019
Indian
Railways have come up with a novel way of getting elephants to buzz off from
train tracks: speakers that play the sound of bees to scare the jumbos away.
Almost 70
elephants were killed by trains between 2013 and June this year, mostly in the
north-eastern state of Assam and northern West Bengal.
But
nearly 50 buzzing amplifiers have been deployed as part of "Plan Bee"
at a dozen "elephant corridors" in the vast forests of Assam state,
home to nearly 6,000 elephants, 20 percent of the country's total.
"We
were looking for means to stop the elephants from coming on to the tracks and
our officers came up with this device," Pranav Jyoti Sharma, an Indian
Railways spokesperson, told AFP.
The
buzzing is played as trains approach vulnerable points and can be heard up to
half a mile (600 metres) away, the spokesman said.
The
devices were tested for efficiency in 2017 on domesticated elephants, and then
wild ones, before they were deployed for real last year.
The novel
approach has won the team accolades from animal conservationists and on Tuesday
an award for "best innovative idea" from Indian Railways for regional
operator Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR).
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