Coimbatore : All India Muslim League on Monday appealed to the disrict collector to take steps to protect the Western Ghats from the encroachers and also bring back ‘Chinnathambi,’ an elephant, which was acting as ‘protector of forests.’

A few members of the League submitted a petition to the Collector in this regard and said that largescale encroachment was destroying the flora and fauna of the Western Ghats.

Chinnathambi, based on the complaints by local farmers for destroying their produce, was captured and translocated to Varagaliyar some 150 Kms from Thadagam on the outskirts. But the elephant came out and is camping in and around Udumalpet in nearby Tirupur district, covering more than 300 kms.

Seeking to bring back the elephant so that the encroachers can be driven away, as elephant acted as the guardians of forests, the petition said that due to encroachment large number of wild life particularly elephants are migrating to human habitats and creating problem to farmers and man-animal conflict.

Meanwhile, Chinnathambi, which was moving around Udumalpet on Monday strayed into a coconut farm in a village and destroyed 10 to 15 trees, much to the grief of the farmers, police said.

The forest department officials are monitoring its movement and engaged in driving it to the jungle areas, they said.