Human-elephant conflict is not ancient. According to a report, India is home to the second highest number of elephants used in tourism in Asia. Of the 21 venues housing 509 elephants, 45% of them are kept in severely inadequate conditions. SHALINI SAKSENA speaks with wildlife experts on why the conflict has increased and what can be done to reduce it
Human association with the elephant dates back 2,000 years. The human-elephant conflict is just as old. They appear in Hindu mythology and in Buddhist scriptures. Books talk about how elephants were tamed and prepared for war. We have paintings that show how the jumbos were used to intimidate the enemy. Their height offered advantage over the foot soldiers. But it also meant that the animal was the first to be killed, brutally.
We associate the elephant with intelligence, benevolence, devotion and even beauty. But we also associate it with killing humans. Herds in search of food have entered human habitats and damaged houses and crops are commonplace. People consider the animal a problem since it leaves behind a trail of destruction. Also, unlike the tiger or the rhino, elephants are not State-protected. When they come in contact with humans, there is apathy. Elephant killing is, thus, common.
Given this scenario, it is not surprising to come across reports that two elephants died after sustaining severe wounds in their mouth after they allegedly chewed fruits stuffed with explosives. The female elephant in Kollam district had died in Pathanapuram forest range area under Punalur division, the other elephant that was pregnant died on May 27 in Palakkad district.
Or read reports that 40 elephants died in the last 100 days (December 2017) due to electrocution, poisoning or trains mowing them down. The reason for apathy towards elephants, conservationists say, is due to pressure from increasing human population, consequential developmental activities and ivory poaching.
Another problem is that unlike National Parks that are well-protected, elephant reserves enjoy no privilege. Take the case of Assam. The State has around 500 elephants and around 10,000 sq km of forest cover. Only a small portion falls under national parks and sanctuaries. The jumbo is vulnerable outside the protected zone.
According to a report by World Animal Protection, over 200 elephants in India were kept in severely inadequate conditions. The new report exposed the dismal conditions of elephants at entertainment venues in the country and alarming elephant tourism trends across Asia. The third edition of the report — Elephants, Not Commodities was released last week on World Elephant Day. It compares research spanning a decade into elephant tourism, assessing venues across Thailand, India, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
India is home to the second highest number of elephants used in tourism in Asia, and of the 21 venues housing 509 elephants, the report found 45% (225) of the elephants were kept in severely inadequate conditions.
“The findings of this report are truly shocking. In India, elephants are revered and are considered a heritage animal. And yet we are witnessing that there are 21 venues housing over 500 elephants for the entertainment of people. This is completely unacceptable. Elephants are wild animals and they belong in the wild. I urge the Indian Government to effectively enforce existing wildlife protection laws to stop trade of wild animals and wild animal products,” Gajender K Sharma, country director, World Animal Protection, India, says. His organisation is working to phase out elephant rides at the Amer Fort in Jaipur, Rajasthan where over 100 elephants provide daily rides to thousands of tourists.
One is told that the tourists need to know the truth. Any elephant that you can get close enough to touch, is an elephant that’s been subjected to horrific abuse for this use. It’s not just riding and circus-style shows that involve suffering, it's the bathing and selfie opportunities that you might find at so-called sanctuaries, orphanages or rescue centers. This isn’t innocent fun. This is cruelty.
“Our focus is to reduce cruelty towards the wild animals globally where they are captured for entertainment and other commercial benefits. All wild animals belong in the wild. Until this commercial practice is stopped, this cruelty is not going to end. The same applies to the jumbo to a certain level. If one were to look at the elephant-man conflict, many of them stem from privately owned elephants destroying crops or injuring the mahout. There are other incidents where the wild elephants enter farms and destroy the crop. The two need to be dealt with differently. The elephants in captivity can be dealt with — ensuring that no new elephant enters captivity. For the wild elephant-man conflict can be tackled if all the stakeholders come together for a holistic approach for a solution,” Sharma says.
“The elephant is a sensitive animal. Keeping it under urban cities is a torture for them. The constant city noise makes them uncomfortable. Just because something was done historically and the kings used the animal for rides doesn’t mean that the same practice needs to continue. The animal has served us well in ancient times. The society has evolved. It is time that we give them a better life by leaving them in their natural habitat,” Sharma says.
He tells you that we need to understand that it is not the elephant that is at fault.
“We are the ones who have entered their habitat. While we have good animal protection laws in place, the problem lies in the implementation of these at the village level. The people at this level don’t know what the law says when it comes to protection of wild animals. There is a lack of general awareness about the wildlife protection laws and if they commit a crime against wild life, there will be serious repercussions. The enforcement of laws needs to be strengthened and the community needs to be made aware how they can coexist with the animal,” Sharma tells you.
Dr Raman Sukumar, a well-known elephant expert of Asia and Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, tells you that the human-elephant has been on the rise especially in the last three to four decades.
“What has changed at the ground level is how this very complex relationship has changed. I have written four books on this animal and one of them is about the cultural history that dates back to ancient times and talks about elephant-man relationships. If we take a starting point some 30-40 years back, the conflict has been on the rise. Back in 1980-81, when I began my research on the elephants, around 125 people were being killed each year across the country, related to encounters within the forest as well as agricultural land. Additionally, cultivated crops were being damaged. This number has now risen to 500 humans per year, apart from about 100 elephant deaths in conflicts. We are talking about the conflict that increased four-fold,” Sukumar explains.
He tells you that there is a need to understand that elephants have now started going into areas and States where they never went before especially if one is to take States like Jharkhand and Odisha. “Elephants have been moving in a big way from Jharkhand and Odisha into southern West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and even Madhya Pradesh. This is what we call dispersal of elephants which began sometimes in the late 1980s. At the ground level people are not used to these animals at all. Elephants are not just moving inside the forested area. They are also moving through agricultural land and villages. How does one expect people to deal with this? They have not seen wild elephants since the Mughal times. I would therefore not put all the onus of the conflict entirely on humans. What we should do is to prevent the jumbos from entering all the places. There is no real natural habitat for the elephants in southern West Bengal. They are moving and taking refuge in small patches of forest during the day time. At night they come out and eat the crops,” Sukumar says, who has an overall strategy.
The most important being – to prevent the elephant from moving beyond a certain point within a State. “There has to be some line that we need to draw. The entire conflict depends on the push-pull factors. The push factors indicate that there is something transformative happening in the elephant’s natural habitat. Humans are taking over the land eating into the forest. If one were to look at the forest today, there are changes happening. Take for example mining in Jharkhand and Odisha. Mining is impacting and fragmenting the habitat and not just directly but indirectly as well. Take the North-east. There has been large scale deforestation in States like Assam during the 1990s. The elephants have been pushed out,” Sukumar tells you.
Then there are the pull factors and we have to see what is happening outside the forests. Due to better irrigation facilities — canal water systems and pumping of ground water — farmers instead of growing one crop a year, are now growing two-three crops a year. The elephant needs a lot to eat and it sees huge fields with an abundance of nutritious food, making an attractive source of food for them. There are biological factors too where one finds that in small areas — outside Bengaluru — one has over 40 bulls which have taken residence in agricultural areas for the food.
“The big drought in 1981-82 in southern India also left an impact. An elephant clan from Tamil Nadu moved into Andhra Pradesh. The State had never seen this and the elephants left for greener pastures never to return to their home land. Some sanctuaries were created for the elephant in Andhra but one can’t hold back the animal, which has moved further northward into Andhra” Sukumar says.
The condition in other Asian countries is no different. There are over 3,800 captive elephants in 357 elephant tourism venues. Thailand is home to three quarters of the elephants and has seen a shocking 70 per cent increase in their number in just 10 years. What is truly horrifying is that 2,390 (63 per cent) elephants are suffering in severely dire conditions at 208 venues across the countries studied, and of those just 279 (seven per cent) elephants are kept in high-welfare venues. This is in contrast to 2015, when 2,242 (77 per cent) of elephants lived in severely inadequate conditions, and 194 (seven per cent) lived in high-welfare venues.
According to Dr Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar, head, Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Division, Aaranyak in Guwahati, there are several factors that have led to the elephant-man conflict some of them are habitat degradation, shrinking of habitat, loss of connectivity between forest, blockage of corridors, increase of human population, unplanned development, linear infrastructure and reduction of tolerance level of human.
“The challenge that the jumbo is facing today is lack of good habitat and food. Elephants are a long ranging animal and they are not able to move freely between habitats, as corridors and connectivity between forest areas are blocked either by human habitation and by developmental activities. They constantly encounter humans, as a result of that stress level increasing, injury due to cruel attacks by humans and retaliatory killing,” Lahkar says.
He has a reason for the brutal, if not inhumane attacks on the gentle giants.
“If a person’s house is damaged every week, initially for a few weeks he may bear thinking elephant as God, however after that he would defend his home and try different means of safeguard. On top of that villagers do not receive compensation on time, there is a huge gap between Forest Dept and villagers, so conflict becomes more negative. We, human beings, are losing our tolerance level towards elephants and people try to do brutal attacks,” Lahkar explains.
Sadly, despite the elephant-man conflict that has been a topic of debate, no progress has been made is because the elephants are intelligent animals and a single mitigation approach does not work and conflicts are site specific, mitigation measures work in one place may not work in another.
“The mitigation measures are also expensive as the size of the animal is large, so difficult to cover a large area. Time has come to take some holistic approaches. Also, we need to move away giving so much attention to the tiger and concentrate on the Asian Elephant which is now endangered. There is a lack of political will to conserve the National Heritage Animal of India. I feel slowly it is going to be a heritage. The Government constituted an Elephant Task Force (ETF) in 2010 under the leadership of historian Mahesh Rangarajan to review the existing policy of elephant conservation in India and formulate future interventions. The task force came out with a comprehensive report in the same year, called Gajah: Securing the Future for Elephants in India. What happened to this report? One can compare that annual budget of project elephant and project tiger,” Lahkar says.
The solution, according to Lahkar, lies in the need to protect elephants and their habitat whatever remains; appreciate the conservation value of elephants.
“Ensure uninterrupted movement in corridors and between forests including interstate and transboundary, conduct scientific study particularly study movement and habitat use. Most importantly we need to understand the human dimension of elephant-man conflict. Provide compensation on time, livelihood support to families in affected areas and build capacity of local people on how to live with elephants will enhance the tolerance level,” Lahkar tells you.
What is needed, according to Sukumar, is a different strategy to tackle human-elephant conflict. “We need a policy framework that decides how many elephants one wants approximately in a specific area. The strategy will then vary depending on the regional and local level. For different regions the conflict mitigation strategy should be somewhat different. The kind of action taken at the local level will have to be different as well. There should be a landscape approach and within that one should decide action plans. This is the premise behind Project Elephant back in 1992 which designed Elephant Reserves or Landscapes across the country and provided the strategic framework and regional perspective plans to conserve and manage the animal,” Sukumar tells you.
