Indian Railways to install Honey Bee sound System on Tracks
A honey bee sound system has been installed on the Haridwar-Dehradun railway line that goes through Rajaji National Park to avoid collision between trains and animals. The Northern Railways has been facing this challenge for a long time in the country. It was a challenge for the railways to keep elephants and other stray animals away from the track. Elephants were often seen on railway tracks passing through wild paths. As a result, there were many accidents reported as well as there was a risk of train accident. To avoid such incidents the Moradabad Railway Division of Northeast railway downloaded the sound of buzzing of honey bees from the Internet and installed sound systems on the side of the railway tracks.
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Honey Bee Sound System drove the Animals Away
The sound of the honey bees buzzing all around will drive the elephants away and that’s the reason NFR adopted this method. In the last quarter of last year, some tracks placed this sound device and concluded that the experiment was successful. So far 6 elephants have been victims of accident on tracks in 6-8 months’ time. As the number of devices on tracks increase this data will improve further.
Range of honey sound system is 600 m
T. Prakash, Moradabad Railway division says that “We have identified some ranges. Sound devices have been installed on the tracks of the same range. This range is 109 km in total. There are instructions to keep the speed of the train low in these areas. The sound of the device goes up to 600 meters away, so elephants stay away”.
Indian Railways has taken this Idea by Kenya
This project is economic to install as the price of this device is just two thousand rupees. The Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Railways are coordinating to implement this project. Let us tell you that North East was inspired from Kenya to start this exercise. Even in Kenya elephants had come to the railway track and collided with train leading to large number of death of elephants. In 2010, they started planting artificial honeycomb on the sides of a railway track passing through wooded areas. Within two years, the number of elephants who died after hitting the train decreased by 97 percent. Let us tell you that in 2017 in the Northeast, the maximum number of 19 elephants died due to collision with the train. A total of 55 elephants have died in the North East in the last five years. Ten elephants died in 2018 and ten in 2019.