Borjuri:The dramatic rescue story of a two month old female elephant calf had a happy ending when she was successfully reunited with her natal herd in the north eastern state of Assam . This is the fourth elephant calf to be reunited with its natal herd immediately after being rescued by the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) and the Assam Forest Department. Rathin Burman, manager at CWRC, who mobilized the rescue team recounts some unforgettable scenes of elephant behavior and herd instincts.

At about 11 am yesterday, I received a call from the Divisional Forest office of Kaziranga that an elephant calf was trapped in a tea garden trench at Lokhojan Tea Estate, about 10 km from here. Since our CWRC veterinarian Dr. Anjan Talukdar was out of the range of mobile phones, operating on an elephant at Panbari Beat office and the road was closed due to the Indo-Asean car rally, I had no option but to wait for Dr. Talukdar, when I could finally contact him on his mobile an hour later.

Talukdar was on his way back to CWRC when a capped langur fell off a discontinuous canopy. The injured langur had to be brought to CWRC and operated upon by Talukdar. Meanwhile, the car rally passed through and the road was finally open to traffic. It was already 1 o’ clock when we could finally move out for the rescue operation. Enroute we picked up Dilip Sarma, Beat Officer from the Assam forest department and Padum Dutta, a forest guard and we reached the Lokhojan Tea Estate an hour later.

The site where the elephant calf was trapped ostensibly for the last eight hours was at some distance from where the rescue van was parked. While walking towards the trapped calf, I heard Talukdar call out from behind but when I swung around, I could only see his head. Talukdar had fallen into a ditch! We figured out that this was exactly how the elephant calf may have fallen into the five feet deep trench! After rescuing the CWRC veterinarian from the trench, we finally moved to rescue the trapped calf.

Dr. Talukdar examined the calf as soon as she was pulled out of the trench and found her to be fine except for a minor laceration over the right eye. A collective decision was made to try and reunite her with her natal herd, as we had successfully done this to an elephant calf rescued under similar circumstances from the same estate in 2001.

Locating the natal herd of a displaced elephant calf is not easy in this part of the country, where elephant herds tend to move across vast tracts of jungle. Enquiries among local populace yielded no clue but the rescue party’s efforts were aided by the trumpeting of elephants that seemed to emerge from a hilly tract about a kilometer away from the rescue site.

Hoping it was the calf’s natal herd, we took the calf in our rescue van in the direction of the trumpeting sounds but the presence of a stream 600m further put a halt to the van. We had no option but to wade across to an elevated ground and leave the calf there, hoping that the herd would come looking for her.

The calf being coated with mud to mask the smell of humans.

The rescue team then applied mud mixed with elephant dung to the body of the rescued calf to mask any smell left by human intervention on the calf. It was past 3 pm when this job was accomplished and the long wait in hiding for signs of appearance of the natal herd began for the rescue party.

Suddenly we saw a herd of about six to seven elephants rush towards the calf like a hurricane from the nearby thick forested area. They approached the calf, smelt it but seemed bewildered. All the while, the rescued calf kept crying out. The elephant herd created a racket by beating their trunks and trumpeting and rushed out towards the hills as swiftly as they had come, leaving the female calf behind.

None of us in the rescue party had seen elephants behave as they had just done. Each one tried to come up with a theory trying to explain this behavior. Ten minutes later, another herd appeared from the opposite side of the forest but this herd’s behavior was diametrically opposite of what the rescue team had just seen.

They smelt the calf, communicated with each other for a while and took the calf with them. All the elephants in this herd were females with the exception of two sub-adult males. It was not clear as to which was the calf’s mother, since all the female elephants in this herd displayed the same concern for the calf.

After waiting on site for another hour to ensure that the calf was not abandoned, I followed the forest guard Mr. Dutta and the CWRC keeper Lakhiram into the forest to verify that the calf had indeed left with the herd. Satisfied that the calf was not in the vicinity, we asked the local people to report to the authorities if the calf was sighted in isolation.

The road block due to the car rally had somehow proved to be a blessing in disguise because it delayed us such that we were able to spot the movement of the herd in the vicinity. Mr Sarma opined that this was the time when elephant herds generally come down from the hilly area towards the nearby paddy field and we could easily spot the herd in the nearby forest area.

To ensure that the calf was not abandoned, I revisited the site the next day around the same time and interviewed the local people. When we approached the same site of yesterday’s incident, we could see a herd of 17 elephants coming down from the nearby hills toward the tea garden area. We could spot two calves in the herd and one was almost the same size as the calf rescued yesterday. Our driver Mahadeo Das and keeper Lakhiram who were both present yesterday said that probably it was the same calf that was reunited with the herd. The presence of two sub-adult tuskers in this herd, which were sighted the day before ended all our apprehensions.

CWRC is a joint establishment of the Department of Environment and Forests, Government of Assam, and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and supported by WTI’s partner, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). It is a one-of-its kind facility for rescue and rehabilitation of injured, displaced and orphan wild animals in Assam , India . This operation of reuniting a displaced calf gave us a close insight into some facets of an elephant herd’s behaviour that we had never experienced in years of rescue and rehabilitation work at CWRC.