India: Elephant rescued from pit with excavator by forest officials

Forest department officials in India’s eastern Odisha state rescued an elephant after it fell into a pit.

A wildlife researcher said that when villagers saw the baby elephant had separated from its herd, they started shouting which alarmed the mammoth who ran away and fell into a pit.

Wildlife researcher Vanoomitra Acharya said: “The (forest) department has rescued it. They made a passageway for it with the help of an excavator”

The number of wild Asiatic elephants has fallen to under 50,000, just 15% of its historic average, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.