Blind men ignorant about the ways of the elephant

As some communities see elephants as living Gods, farmers who lose their year’s crop overnight to elephants see elephants as pests. While protected area managers take pride in growing elephant populations, managers of reserve forests or revenue land see them as a problem that needs to be driven from one area to the other. Ecologists see their vital role in the ecosystem but fail to understand the complex relationships that elephants have with human society and the increasingly changing landscape. To secure the future of this iconic species — less than 50,000 of which remain in the wild today — the world looks up to India, home to more than 60% of the species sharing space with 17% of the world’s population in less than 3% of the global land area.

Recently, 10 elephants succumbed in Bandhavgarh tiger reserve, Madhya Pradesh. As per a toxicology report from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, the elephants consumed “a large quantity of kodo plants/grains”, which was also found to be the cause of death. This unmasks underlying questions for conservation and management. While on one hand, elephants are ecosystem engineers that maintain natural systems, they are also responsible for substantial crop losses, faced by people who are often already marginalised. Requiring vast stretches of habitats that can provide 150kg of wild fodder and 80 litres of fresh water to a single adult individual, elephants are hardwired to move long distances. As these habitats become increasingly fragmented due to expanding human footprint, elephants and people meet more often, thereby increasing the probability of adverse interactions, particularly with marginalised people. Agriculture practices that do not account for local ecology often pit farmers against elephants as crops vital for local food security such as paddy, maize, and millets, being part of the grass family, are also staples for elephants. Further, mining in mineral-rich areas (such as parts of eastern India) displaces pachyderms. Elephants have recently moved back to Central India and are now permanently residing there after a gap of several decades. Going forward, several approaches have to be considered simultaneously.

First, crop compensation schemes have to be operationalised. In Madhya Pradesh, schemes exist but lack effective implementation. Second, innovations need to be made to reduce competition. What the elephant considers food, a person considers thieving. Joint approaches between the forest department, NGOs and the agriculture department can be adopted to promote crops that do not attract elephants in forest-adjacent villages like Bandhavgarh. Such a policy could have potentially saved the lives of the elephants that died in Bandhavgarh and could have also saved marginalised farmers from yearly losses to raids by wild herbivores. Third, harmful weeds and invasive species have to be removed from areas with elephants to augment habitat. Fourth, we can strengthen coexistence through progressive means like a small cess from tourism revenue. As per state data, only five major protected areas in Madhya Pradesh witnessed as many as 6.3 lakh tourists in 2021. A small cess of ₹100 for human-wildlife coexistence from this tourist revenue could cover the annual cost of compensation for livestock loss and human casualties, which stood at an annual average of ₹3.43 crore between 2014 and 2019, as per the 2022 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Madhya Pradesh on Wildlife Conservation and Sustainable Management of Wildlife Habitats.

In the Bandhavgarh instance, it is unclear how much time the elephants spent in the millet fields. A similar case of poisoning through kodo millets was recorded in Vannathiparai, Tamil Nadu, in 1933 (recorded in the Journal of Bombay Natural History Society in 1934). The viscera from the Bandhavgarh elephants have been sent to more labs for testing. While the ultimate cause of death is still to be ascertained, it is abundantly clear that the way forward includes communities and stakeholders working together in the landscape.

Finally, with no lived experience of sharing space with elephants in Central India among the local communities and wildlife managers (the last records of resident elephants in this region are from the 1900s) it is imperative to work fast and make the region conducive for elephants. Fair and prompt compensation for crop losses, early warning and rapid response mechanisms to prevent the loss of human lives, and overpasses and underpasses next to highways and railway lines to ensure free movement of elephants, are just some of the approaches that may work. Efficient delivery of these services would also need increasing cross-sectoral collaborations between government departments and greater involvement of the society at large. Surveillance systems and ground monitoring of elephants must be relayed to local people.

While the last remaining wild elephants still find solace in the forests of India and the hearts of Indians, the writing on the wall is that all is not well for these giants, or for communities that share space with them. The reoccupation of Central Indian forests by elephants presents us with an opportunity — to plan well, and to find synergies between state and non-State actors to secure the future of the species.

Aritra Kshettry and Neha Sinha are with WWF-India. The views expressed are personal

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