PTR foresters hunt for missing jumbo

TNN | Sep 9, 2012, 12.00PM IST Daltonganj: Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) officials have launched a search to locate an injured adult male elephant which has gone missing at Betla National Park recently. As many as 40 trackers and seven forest guards along with officials of the Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) launched the search for the missing elephant on Friday. The search was conducted within a radius of two km from Baiga Pani at the national park where the elephant was last seen limping and struggling for life about a week earlier. A PTR conservator said the elephant was badly injured. He, however, said the cause of the injury was not known. D S Srivastava, a member of the steering committee of Project Elephant, said a rescue operation on such a massive scale had not been carried out at the park earlier. "The disappearance of the elephant has come as a huge surprise, since an elephant, particularly, with a leg injury, cannot to trudge a long distance. It should have been around the place where it was last seen a week before," Srivastava said. The wound was in a very bad condition with puss oozing from it. In such a situation, an elephant cannot move much and will prefer to be as close to a water source as possible. "Surprisingly, there is no trace of it in and around Baiga Pani, a site where there is enough water," said Srivastava. Though a wounded elephant normally prefers to sit, the grass surface in and around the area showed no sign of any elephant moving about in the vicinity. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/PTR-foresters-hunt-for-missing-jumbo/articleshow/16332545.cms