25 ERTs formed to protect Rohingyas from elephants

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has formed 25 Elephant Response Teams (ERTs), each made up of 10 Rohingya volunteers, as part of its plan to reduce incidents involving elephants coming into conflict with refugees in the world's largest refugee settlement.

They are being equipped with whistles, torches, and loudspeakers and will work from bamboo watch-towers being established around the refugeesettlement to help guard the site, said the UNHCR.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency is partnering with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bangladesh to reduce elephants' deaths in the refugee settlement.

Since the Rohingya refugee influx into Bangladesh started, there have been at least 10 deaths resulting from human-elephant incidents in the main Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee settlement.

The highly congested refugee site, which houses around 570,000 refugees who fled Myanmar, used to be forest land but is now crowded with tens of thousands of refugee shelters and services, it said.

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