DUNGUN: A farmer in Kampung Kuala Jengai here suffered losses of about RM20,000 after a wild elephant damaged his coconut plantation in the early hours last week.
Mohd Marzuki Saat, 67, said the wild elephant is believed to have entered his plantation at around 2am on July 13, destroying 34 four-year-old coconut trees that had begun bearing fruit this year.
“The elephant knocked down part of the electric fence installed around the plantation before entering and damaging my crops.
"This is the first time I have experienced such an incident since I started cultivating coconuts in 2022,” he said when met at Kampung Kuala Jengai on Monday (July 20).
Marzuki said he had a total of 450 coconut trees of various varieties on the 2.4-hectare plantation, including the Malayan Yellow Dwarf, Malayan Red Dwarf, Sungai Gulang-Gulang and Pandan varieties.
Kuala Jengai village development and security committee chairman Che Ku Rahimi Che Ku Mat Salleh said the incident had been reported to the Terengganu Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan).
Meanwhile, Terengganu Perhilitan director Dennis Ten Choon Yung, when contacted, confirmed that the department received reports of the incident on July 13, and investigations found that the wild elephant had likely strayed from the nearby Besol Forest Reserve about 500 metres from the village.
He added that Perhilitan officers are monitoring the area to track the elephant, drive it back into the forest and prevent similar incidents from recurring. – Bernama
