Valuable Indian lessons on human-elephant conflict

By JAGATH C. SAVANADASA
Email- jaysavana123@gmail.com

It is an absorbing and insightful success story about the management of the most visible and emotional man versus animal conflicts between humans and elephants.

This article examines the methods and techniques deployed at times using modern technology by India, to minimise damage besides conserving elephants and protecting human life.

This is indeed an object lesson on how a huge complex yet powerful nation has achieved success to preserve a large elephant population

This article is culled from a news magazine India Today published weekly, which has a worldwide circulation.

At the centre of the conflict is the ultimate tragedy – the deaths of both humans and the animals.

Briefly, it begins with the encroachment of the elephant habitat by man. This forces these animals to venture out of their forest confines in search of food. The result more often than not is a deadly clash.

In legal and glorified terms it could be called territorial aggrandizement either way by man or elephant.

Of course, there are other relevant factors like the unavailability of water for elephants following persistent droughts, and changing climatic patterns and damage to cultivation by elephants, leading to grain and food shortages for villagers.

But let us begin this narrative with an incident relating to recent elephant deaths in India.

Out of a herd of 13 elephants, seven had died following their contact with a loosely dangling live K.V line in a paddy field in the district of Odisha, due to electrocution. This led to an immediate response, signifying how alert the relevant authorities are in India. An institution named The National Green Tribunal, through a newly formed committee, had examined carefully the actual cause of the tragedy. Following its findings, the committee called on the local power utility to make a deposit of I.R. 1 crore the equivalent of I.R. 10 million, since it held that the deaths of the precious animals were due to apathy and negligence of the utility.

The deposit was to be made to the warden of wildlife.

The Indian elephant population

It is interesting to note that the Indian population of elephants which is between 27,000 and 30,000 is the largest of the species of a single country in Asia, which currently has a population of 40,000. These figures are, however, subject to dispute.

In terms of the deaths of these animals, each year it ranges from 100-120.

In contrast, arising from the conflict between the two, about 1300 people have died in India over the last 4 years.

One reason adduced to this situation, based on research, clearly shows the depletion of forests is the prime factor. Arising from this is the fact that the depletion impels the elephants to search for new habitats, which often go into villages.

Thus there emerges a disastrous situation, the Indian report opines.

On the other hand, “India Today” contends that her elephant population has stabilized, and that it is not the human- elephant combat that is at the heart of the issue but the destruction of forests.

Mega herbivores

Elephants are a large migratory species. It is reported to have a travel range of approximately 150-350 sq. kilometers annually.

Elephants also have, on the basis of their huge body proportions, an equally huge appetite and in order to satisfy their needs, they target fields and plantations nearby their usual habitats. Each elephant consumes on an average 150 kg of food and 200-300 litres of water daily.

Quite often one could see, in the media, these lovable creatures in desperate search of food, making forays into places outside their usual domain, only to be mowed down by rail. One could also see pictures of men lying on the ground killed by elephants when they enter fields.

Evidence in India, as much as in Sri Lanka, the latter to a limited extent points to the fact that it is mainly development projects such as roads and transmission lines, apart from mines and dams that make great inroads into the elephant habitat and disrupt their life patterns.

Additionally in India a big canal in extent 16 km for a hydro-electricity project in Uttarakhand resulted in paving the way to destroying an existing elephant boundary. Adding fuel to this problem, is the open border between India and Nepal, only for humans.

Elephants are kept out of it through a 17 k.m fence. The Indian elephant population, the article reveals, had been subject to forced migration due to rampant mining activity in Odisha. Such activity had begun in the 1980s and as a result today about 300 elephants are relocated within 30000 Sq Km of forest in Chhattisgarh. Similar changes have been carried out in Jharkhand and every year about 150 elephants are moved into this territory.

A local terrorist group called Bodo, which was active for about a decade in the 1980s, had led to the death of about 100 elephants annually from 1980-1990.

Project Elephant

In 1992 India introduced the Project Elephant plan incorporating Elephant Reserves. Conceptually the plan was designed to create Elephant Reserves that should encounter minimum resistance from the local populace. 30 such reserves are in existence today, and their combined land area is approximately 60,000 SQ Km.

Significantly this has led to impressive results. In the last 37 years the elephant population doubled to 30,000 on the basis of a 2017 census.

However a resultant major issue is the presence of a big elephant population in areas that cannot support them.

Habitat Management

India, in the manner of Sri Lanka, though ours is of a lesser magnitude, considers habitat management a formidable task. Though India has identified some 160 odd elephant corridors (which unlike Sri Lanka) includes 17 international corridors between India and Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal, all inter-connected nations of course on one or single land mass. Only these 17 are considered a safe passage for elephants.

They are spread over an area of 1600-2000 Sq km. but in terms of area only about 600 to 800 Sq km’s are genuinely safe areas.

Poaching

Poaching in India is severely curtailed, thanks to remedial action and also due to shortage of tuskers. This menace is likely to return once the elephants born in the 1980s would have grown tusks.

Also, according to the Wildlife Institute of India (W.I.I) the population of elephants need monitoring scientifically. Especially, the mother-to-calf ratio, or the number of breeding cows per 100 specimens

However, it needs to be mentioned that policies applied in respect of tiger conservation, which India carried out successfully, cannot be applied to elephant conservation. The rationale is that you could keep tigers within their reserves, but this is not possible in case of elephants.

But in certain areas of India a degree of success has been achieved, and inviolate habitats for elephants are created by moving human populations outside the areas reserved for elephants.

New conservation measures

An innovation that seems successful is the installation of bio-acoustics based sensors along rail tracks in Assam and West Bengal. It is reported that these sensors are able to track the sounds arising from elephant movement and transmit them to a control centre. As a result 10 drivers could initiate evasive action.

Bio-acoustics are already utilized in the oceans which monitor movement of whales and dolphins. The objective is to prevent them from swimming onto ships and other sea borne vessels .

Professor Michael Andrew of the University of Catalina, Spain a global expert in Bio Acoustics who is responsible for its introduction to India, calls this a major breakthrough. He adds passive acoustics technology offers a unique opportunity to balance human interests and wildlife conservation, but another view notes that sensors are just one way to detect the presence of elephants. In other words it is just a tool. According to a leading Indian expert Prof. Raman Sukumar of the Indian Institute of Science, sensors need to be supplemented with other techniques.

Despite a few drawbacks, one could visualize the coherent and cogent policies India has applied in preventing elephant deaths and also minimizing damage in this seemingly intractable conflict between man and elephant.