Six Asiatic wild elephants were electrocuted as they went berserk after drinking rice beer in India's remote northeast, a wildlife official said yesterday.
Nearly 40 elephants came to a village on Friday looking for food.
Some of them found beer, which farmers ferment and keep in plastic and tin drums in their huts, said Sunil Kumar, a state wildlife official.
They got drunk, uprooted an electric pole and were electrocuted in Chandan Nukat, a village 240 kilometers west of Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya state,
"There would have been more casualties had the villagers not chased them away," said Dipu Mark, a local conservationist.
The elephants are known to have a taste for rice beer brewed by tribal communities in India's northeast.
Four wild elephants died in similar circumstances in the region three years ago.
Also last week, five rare Asiatic lions were found electrocuted on the edge of western India's Gir National Park. Authorities said the lions were killed by an electrified fence, which a villager had put up illegally to protect crops. India's northeast accounts for the world's largest concentration of wild Asiatic elephants with the states of Assam and Meghalaya estimated to have 7,000.
"It's great to have such a huge number of elephants, but the increasing man-elephant conflict following the shrinkage in their habitat due to the growing human population is giving us nightmares," said Pradyut Bordoloi, former Assam Forest and Environment Minister.
Satellite imagery by the National Remote Sensing Agency, shows that as much as 280,000 hectares of thick forests in Assam have been cleared off by human encroachment between 1996 and 2000.
The villagers have been retaliating by poisoning the elephants.
They killed 19 wild elephants in 2001 after they had feasted on their standing crops and demolished several homes in Assams Sonitpur district, 180km north of Gauhati, the state capital.
Questions:
1.In the latest incident how many elephants were electrocuted?
2.What is the name of the wildlife park where five lions were killed?
3.According to the report how many hectares of land has been cleared in Assam?
Answers:
1.6.
2.Gir National park.
3.280,000.
（英语点津 Celene 编辑）
About the broadcaster:
Marc Checkley is a freelance journalist and media producer from Auckland, New Zealand. Marc has an eclectic career in the media/arts, most recently working as a radio journalist for NewstalkZB, New Zealand’s leading news radio network, as a feature writer for Travel Inc, New Nutrition Business (UK) and contributor for Mana Magazine and the Sunday Star Times. Marc is also a passionate arts educator and is involved in various media/theatre projects in his native New Zealand and Singapore where he is currently based. Marc joins the China Daily with support from the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
