Hassan: An SMS to keep the marauding jumbo off your back. This ingenious technique has been devised by Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), an NGO, which has started sending bulk SMS alerts on mobile phones to keep people in jumbo attack prone areas on their toes and stay away from the elephants.
The NGO has a reason to come up with this measure. In the lush green vegetation of Sakleshpur and surrounding regions, it’s hard for people to spot elephants and they are often caught unawares when jumbos attack them even causing deaths.
The SMS alerts are beng sent to people living in Sakleshpur and Alur taluks, both chronic human-animal conflict zones in Hassan and was started about a month back by NCF in association with the United Kingdom based Elephant Family and the forest department. So far, the NCF database has about 600 mobile numbers of people in both taluks who could benefit from the alerts.
“The alerts on elephant movement from locals have been reliable,” said research affiliate Vinod Krishnan of NCF while speaking to DC, adding that on a regular basis, about 200 people get SMS alerts on elephants.
The initial response to the SMS alerts has been encouraging with people calling Mr Vinod whenever they come across elephants crossing their path. This in turn, has helped the researcher pass on details of jumbo movement to mobile numbers of people in the specified villages and warn them to be vigilant.
The move to alert people through SMS will be helpful since villagers often return home late and can get updates on the jumbo’s presence, if any in their way. Once, a person gets an alert, he can take precautions for his safety, says Vinod.
Preetham of Hegove village and a coffee planter says there is a need for such an alert system to avoid jumbos which have been causing problems for people in the village.
In future, Mr Vinod plans to use the voice mail facility to keep people alert on jumbo movements. He is looking forward to the co-operation of the public to make the initiative a success.
