Border fighting over elephants & tigers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:
KATHMANDU, Nepal; Jalpaiguri, India–For the second time
in two years elephant incursions across the Nepalese/Indian border
have inflamed tensions in Jhapa, a Nepalese district north of West
Bengal.
“With the Brahmaputra plains in India’s Assam state flooded
by the monsoons, the elephants began migrating,” said the
Indo-Asian News Service. Nepalese police wounded six elephants who
forded the Mechi river to enter Nepal circa June 11, 2009, and
allegedly also shot at Indian forest guards who followed the
elephants into Nepal and tried to stop the shooting.


The Nagarik Vernacular Daily of Nepal on June 18, 2009
agravated the situation when it amplified an unsubstantiated
allegation by politician Padma Lal Biswokarna that India plans to
evict 6,000 Nepalese villages in order to raise 200 to 400
“man-eating tigers” on their land.
Two elephants were killed by police in the vicinity in
mid-July 2009. As many as 200 elephants reportedly retaliated by
wrecking the homes and crops that the shooting was meant to protect.
“In the past, at least 24 people have been killed in Baundangi
village alone by migrating herds,” said IANS.

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