COIMBATORE: Forest department officials found the skeletal remains and tusks of an elephant in an inaccessible and thorny patch of the Boluvampatti range of the Coimbatore forest division on Thursday, nearly a year after the animal is believed to have died.The remains were spotted by forest department personnel who were inspecting camera traps as part of the ongoing tiger census within the Poondi central forest beat in Coimbatore district. The census, which has been under way since August, has involved installing around 700 additional camera traps in dense and difficult-to-access areas of the Coimbatore forest division that could not be monitored effectively during earlier surveys.On Thursday, personnel monitoring cameras in the Poondi central beat of the Bolampatti forest range noticed elephant bones near a stream. During a subsequent inspection of the surrounding area, they found an elephant skull with tusks a short distance from the stream. Other body parts were also found nearby.Forest officials said the carcass had decomposed in the dense thickets and that some of the remains could have been washed downstream by water flowing through the stream, as the area is difficult for people to access.Following instructions from the district forest officer, a postmortem was conducted. The veterinary team estimated that the elephant was around 20 years old.The elephant’s tusks were recovered.The exact cause of the death could not be immediately established, officials said.
