Forest officials in West Bengal’s Bagdogra have won praise on social media after they halted traffic on a busy road to safely guide a herd of wild elephants across. A video of the incident shows the elephants crossing the road one after another as vehicles wait for them to pass. Personnel from the Kurseong Forest Division can be seen managing traffic and preventing vehicles from moving forward until the herd has crossed safely.
In a similar incident highlighting efforts to protect elephants, a video shared by Indian Forest Service officer Parveen Kaswan showed a forest guard waving a red cloth to alert an approaching train as a herd of elephants crossed railway tracks. The guard’s intervention helped avert a potential collision between the train and the animals. “This is how heroes look like in real life. See how Akash Kerketta, a forest staff of Kurseong division averted a major accident. Sikkim Mahananda train was coming on Bagdogra-Naxalbari Route.
Due to timely intervention of forest staff and train pilots elephant herd was saved,” Kaswan wrote.
