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| Edited By: Pooja Patel |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 22, 2018, 07:00 AM IST
India, the land where the Elephant God is worshipped, sees deaths of elephants across its length and breadth. According to Dr Varun R Goswami, who leads the elephant programme for Wildlife Conservation Society in India, each year, 400 to 450 human deaths and 100 elephant deaths are attributed to the human-elephant conflict. This conflict rings the death knell not just for these heavy weights, but also for locals living around the forests. Added to this, there's loss of crops, the livelihood of farmers, whose farms elephants visit. As per the All-India Synchronized Elephant Population Estimation (2017) conducted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, across 23 Indian states, the estimated population of Asian elephants in the wild today is 27,312. As per experts, states that face maximum human-elephant conflict include Uttarakhand, Odisha, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Assam, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
What has led to this grim situation? "Habitat fragmentation is the prime reason," asserts naturalist Shardul Bajikar. And they can be multiple, depending on the geography – in south India it is mainly due to coffee estates, in Assam it's because of the stone mines, tea estates and railway tracks, in Karnataka it is due to infrastructural projects and farmlands. "There are multiple locations where the conflict exists, but the central reason is forest fragmentation. Large forests have been divided into smaller parts disconnected from each other, with minimal corridors," Bajikar adds. His thoughts are echoed by photographer and filmmaker D K Bhaskar, who has made a film called Elephants in the Coffee. "When it comes to Southern India, uncontrolled construction and agricultural expansion are the contributing factors for depleting elephant corridors, which has led to the pachyderms wandering into human-dominated areas. A considerable amount of land has been ransacked by miners, illegally," says Bhaskar. Also, expansion of agricultural — be it banana plantations, coffee estates, tea plantations or jackfruit orchards — lands around peripheries of forests has played a key role in habitat destruction.
Farming, which is the only source of livelihood for most people living in areas of the man-animal conflict, has to bear the brunt of crops being destroyed when herds enter the farms or estates. These agricultural lands located outside the national parks are essentially buffer areas for forests now used for cultivation. In an attempt to stop herds from destroying the crops, these farmers use firecrackers, electric fencing and other harmful means that inadvertently harm both the animals and the people, sometimes even leading to deaths. "People don't intend to kill elephants, but in an attempt to scare them off their farms, these methods end up claiming their lives," says Bhaskar. Death by electrocution in South India has become common. Certain pockets of the North East in the last decade have witnessed deforestation and rampant encroachment into forests. The result? "Levels of human-elephant conflict in Assam's Sonitpur and Udalguri districts are amongst the highest in the country," states Dr Goswami. It has led to a situation where the giants don't have much space to go from one sanctuary to another. A herd of elephants requires a large area to move around as they travel hundreds of kilometres on a regular basis. So even when they are moving or crossing from one fragmented piece of forest to another, it may be perceived as conflict. "This leaves them with no option, but to venture closer to human habitation," explains Bajikar.
(Clockwise: 1. Honey bee hive fences are placed at the periphery of farms, as the bees’ buzzing sound keeps the giants at bay 2. Chilli smoke fires lit along the boundaries of farms as the elephants don’t like its pungent smell 3. An elephant in a tea estate in the Valparai region of Tamil Nadu — Pics: Prachi Mehta, Sreedhar Vijayakrishnan/NCF)
In a Catch-22 kind of situation, what can possibly be done to salvage the situation? Pune-based Wildlife Research and Conservation Society (WRCS) and Bengaluru-based Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) have come up with innocuous solutions. With the support of Asian Elephant Conservation Fund, WRCS has designed low-cost crop-protection methods, which they've successfully implemented in Karnataka's North Kanara district. "One method is to attract honey bees to colonise in wooden logs that are installed in the form of fences," says Prachi Mehta, wildlife scientist and Executive Director of WRCS. Elephants are known to be scared of the buzzing sound that the bees make. These fences are placed around the periphery of the farms, which keep the giants at bay. The second technique is to build fires with chilli and other ingredients along the boundaries of the farms. Elephants don't like the pungent smell and smoke. So they don't venture into such areas. "We figured that the basic reason for deaths caused by elephants, is that people weren't aware that the animals were around that area," explains M Ananda Kumar, a scientist with NCF. Kumar has been working extensively in Tamil Nadu's Valparai region, which is prone to human-elephant conflict. To tackle this problem, an elephant informant network was then created by NCF, which receives information from various people about the location of elephants and also tracks elephants with a team of people; and then this information is sent via SMSes and voice calls on the mobile numbers registered with this network. These are numbers of labourers who work at tea and coffee estates in this region. Once they know where in the estate the elephants are roaming, they don't venture into that area. NCF has been doing this work successfully with the support of Whitley Fund for Nature (UK), Elephant Family (UK), Oracle India and the Tamil Nadu Forest Department.
Though these techniques are working, the underlying issue is conservation of the animal, its corridors and the forests. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has listed Asian elephants as 'endangered' and they also fall under Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act (1972). Schedule I provides protection of the highest order under the Indian law and any offence against these animals attracts imprisonment of six years. They are a keystone species, which means drastic decrease in their population or their extinction would change the ecosystem drastically. "Once these elephants are reduced to a few, it will have a huge impact on the forests. In fact, the effect it will have, will be irreparable," cautions Bajikar. This makes fast-tracking conservation paramount and will require collective effort. "Many of the measures currently used to mitigate human-elephant conflict are fire-fighting methods. We need to really put our heads together to think of long-term strategies that enable the coexistence of elephants and people in a manner that minimises negative interactions between them," suggests Dr Goswami.
Bajikar is of the opinion that "a good way to start is to ensure that the good habitat, which is 4% of the country, should be made into a no-development zone". Degraded forest lands should be identified, scientific afforestation should be practiced and land should be returned to the elephants. "Also, if there is an absolute need of a highway or a railway line to go through the forests or the corridors, then maybe we can consider making a tunnel around it or construct it underground, so that the physical connectivity of the forests remains undisturbed," adds Bajikar. Protecting the wildlife corridors plays a key role here. An existing example is the Mysore-Ooty highway that passes through Karnataka's Bandipur National Park – it is closed at night so that animals can move freely till the sun comes back up. Also, putting technology to good use can enable tracking of herds moving along. "We need to bring in sophisticated aerial surveillance to pinpoint the movement of the herds. This way we can work to mitigate casualties before the elephants reach a farm or an estate," says Bhaskar. "In order to coexist, we need to conserve what is left of the Asian elephant's erstwhile space and resources, and come up with imaginative strategies to enable non-destructive sharing of space, where we co-occur with these amazing giants,"states Dr Goswami positively.
400 to 450 human deaths and 100 elephant deaths are attributed to the human–elephant conflict each year
27,312 is the estimated population of elephants in the wild as per a survey across 23 Indian states
Uttarakhand, Odisha, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Assam, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu: are some of the states that face maximum human-elephant conflict
‘Endangered’: as per the IUCN
Schedule I: of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act (1972) provides highest protection to elephants
