Odisha elephant deaths brought on by bacterial illness contracted from cattle: Central crew report

The dying of six elephants within the Karlapat Wildlife Sanctuary in Kalahandi earlier in January-February was as a consequence of haemorrhagic septicemia brought on by micro organism Pastuerella multoceda, in keeping with a preliminary report by a central crew arrange by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. The elephants are prone to have contracted the micro organism from cattle residing at Tentulipada village, a small hamlet of 12 households, contained in the sanctuary.
The findings come following the postmortem examination of the elephants and the 2 cattle discovered lifeless within the sanctuary. The postmortems in addition to RNA extraction checks have been performed on the Orissa Veterinary College and the samples have now been despatched to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute in Bareilly, UP, for remaining affirmation.
The crew members included Dr Karikalan Mathesh, Scientist, IVRI, Dr Prajna P Panda, National Coordinator, Elephant Cell, Dr Niranjan Sahoo, Professor, OUAT and Padma Shri Okay Okay Sarma from Assam Veterinary College. The crew visited Karlapat Wildlife Sanctuary in Kalahandi South Division and investigated the websites of dying of the elephants.
The elephants are believed to have died anytime between January 29 and February 14 this 12 months and their carcasses have been discovered close to water our bodies. All the seven elephants (5 adults and two calves) discovered lifeless have been females.
Tests have confirmed that each one the lifeless animals had very excessive ranges of Pastuerella multoceda.

“The Tentulipada hamlet has just 12 households and the residents keep livestock including cattle, sheep and goats. The cattle are short in height, bare boned and produce very little milk, and are usually used by villagers for tilling the land. They are also set free in the forest for days for grazing. The deceased elephants had initially been tested for Anthrax and Herpes – two common diseases found in elephants. But when the team found a cow carcass in the forest, it was also tested and high levels of Pastuerella multoceda were found in it. Like the elephants, the cow was also pregnant. The first dead elephant was found in close proximity to the village and the second elephant was also found nearby. The dead cow had been left in the forest for 15 days, but the practice was quite common in the village and had not caused any alarm,” stated a ministry official.
Pastuerella multoceda is a standard micro organism discovered within the respiratory tract of herbivores, particularly in cattle. Only in occasions of stress within the animal, or when the animal has low immunity or is unhealthy – as is the case with the cattle on this explicit village — that the micro organism multiplies quickly and strikes from the respiratory tract to the bloodstream. This then causes diarrhoea and sometimes haemorrhagic septicemia, which could be deadly.
In the case of the Karlapat Wildlife Sanctuary, two cows and 5 elephants have been pregnant and two elephant calves have been newly born. “There is stress in the body of animals when they are pregnant which makes them vulnerable to diseases,” stated the official.
According to the MoE report, the cattle would have handed on the illness to the elephants by means of contamination of the soil by means of their faecal droppings or contamination of the water our bodies. The illness is then believed to have swept by means of the herd by means of direct contact. There are 9 elephants on this explicit herd, out of which seven are lifeless from the illness.
There have been a complete of twenty-two elephants within the sanctuary, say officers. Veterinary and forest officers in Odisha at the moment are on excessive alert and in mission mode to stop the illness from spreading additional. Eight groups of ten forest officers have been patrolling the sanctuary, monitoring the 2 surviving elephants for indicators of the illness in addition to making certain that they’re evaded the opposite elephants within the forest.

The veterinary division has, in the meantime, been conducting an pressing cattle vaccination marketing campaign not solely in Tentulipada however in all villages in and across the forest, outdoors the sanctuary borders, because of which 90 per cent of the cattle within the district – round 6,000 — have been vaccinated. Stagnant water contained in the sanctuary has additionally been handled with bleaching powder to keep away from additional unfold and water samples have been collected from totally different spots for testing.