The ongoing assessment of the shocking deaths of 10 wild elephants since October 29 in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve has highlighted the likelihood of mycotoxins in the Kodo millet suspected to have been consumed by the 13-member herd even as the specter of revenge. killing by poisoning by the locals was looming.

According to the latest statement issued by the office of L. Krishnamoorthy, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Wildlife, Madhya Pradesh, the teams of wildlife health officers and those from the School of Forensic Medicine and Wildlife Health (SWFH) in Jabalpur had, by October 31, completed the autopsies of nine elephants, with the samples being sent to the SWFH forensic laboratory for analysis.

Wildlife veterinarians of the forest department dealing with the crisis received help from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly; Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun; State Forensic Laboratory, Sagar; and the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, to decipher the suspected mycotoxins behind the deaths.

Mycotoxins are natural toxins produced by molds (fungi) and can be found in food.

The official statement said monitoring of the three remaining elephants by experts is ongoing and authorities are looking into all possible angles of death, including criminal activity.

Sources in the Bandhavgarh reserve said that on the afternoon of October 29, locals of Salkhania village in Pator area informed the forest department personnel about the dead elephants in the forests near the village. When staff arrived at the scene, one male and three female elephants were found dead, while five elephants were on the ground in distress. Locals reported that a herd of 13 elephants had been in the area for the past three days. The animals had raided the fields and fed on barley on the morning of October 29.

Even as the death toll rose, veterinarians from the Jabalpur Veterinary College who rushed to the spot to treat the sick elephants faced some resistance from other members of the elephant herd.

The presence of elephants in Bandhavgarh is relatively recent, only since 2016. The 60 elephants living in the reserve are believed to be from neighboring Chhattisgarh.

One of the initial suspicions was that the elephants had been given pesticides through water or paddy. There have been reports of human-animal conflict in Bandhavgarh for a long time. In November 2022, an elephant was found dead in the reserve in a suspected case of penalty killing. However, nothing could be conclusively established at the autopsy. After wildlife activist Ajay Dubey complained in the case, an inquiry was conducted and it was found that the elephant was burnt after its body was discovered.

Bandhavgarh, with nearly 300 villages around the 1,500 sq km reserve, is vulnerable to human-animal conflicts. This is probably also the reason why the reserve reports the highest number of human kills by tigers in Madhya Pradesh. Most villagers have very small holdings and engage in subsistence agriculture.