4 elephants found dead in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve

Four wild elephants were found dead at the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh’s Umaria district on Tuesday, a forest department official said.
The carcasses of the four elephants – three female and one male – were found by the forest guards who were on a routine patrol. They were a part of a herd of 13 elephants. It is suspected that the elephants may have consumed some poisonous or narcotic substance and a post-mortem report was awaited.
Forest department officials searched the area after getting the information and found five elephants, part of the same herd, ill and the remaining four were healthy.
A medical team of wildlife health officers and wildlife veterinarians from Bandhavgarh and School of Wildlife Forensic and Health, Jabalpur, were treating the five wild elephants.
Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve officials and wildlife doctors were in constant touch with the experts of Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and tracking the movement of the four healthy elephants.
Deputy Director of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, Prakash Kumar Verma, said the actual cause of the death will be known only after the post-mortem examination of the four elephants’ carcasses.