NEW DELHI (AP) – A fully grown Indian elephant that washed up in a swamp in Bangladesh after being caught up in raging floodwaters has become a jumbo problem for wildlife officials on both sides of the border.
Floodwaters from monsoon rains carried the male elephant thousands of kilometers (miles) from upstream India before he became trapped in a swamp in Bangladesh’s Jamalpur district some three weeks ago.
Tapan Kumar Dey, a retired forest conservator who was overseeing the rescue efforts, said wildlife workers tranquilized the elephant Sunday to bring him closer to a highway to truck it to a safari park outside Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.
Indian wildlife authorities abandoned a plan to send the elephant back to India because he was unlikely to be welcomed by his herd in the hilly forests of the remote northeastern state of Assam. They then agreed to let him be transferred to the park.
Dey said wildlife experts were experimenting with tranquilization dosages because they wanted to make the transfer to the truck go smoothly. The swampy area where the elephant, whose age was not clear, was found was a few kilometers (miles) from the highway.