Troubled by wild elephants, tribal family builds home on top of 50-foot tree

The family, which also has elderly members, says they have urged local administration for help but no one has come to their aid.

New Delhi: Treehouses are mostly make-shift recreational spaces but for a tribal family in Odisha, it has become a vital means of surviving against rampaging wild elephants.

Having had their homes and crops repeatedly destroyed by a group of rampaging wild elephants, the family recently built a temporary shelter on top of a fifty-feet tall tree in Subarnapur district of the state. That the family includes young children as well as an eighty-year-old man and a seventy-year-old woman does cause massive inconvenience but options too are limited. The family members say that they repeatedly urged the local administration about their troubles but no help has been provided. They say they have asked for a concrete house and proper fencing to keep the animals out but authorities have only offered a blind eye to their cries of help.

So, the entire family - including the elderly - now climb up to their straw treehouse using a wooden ladder every day. It is a tough ask for the able-bodied and a painfully slow one for the elderly to climb up and down each day but one they say they have to against all odds.