HEGGOVE, India, Aug 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – On the day Yogesh became another
of the dozens of Indians trampled to death each year, the coffee plantation
worker knew from the fire crackers set off nearby that danger was at hand.
“Everything happened so fast. The elephant suddenly emerged from behind the
bushes, trampled him and disappeared,” his younger brother Girish — thin,
bearded and wearing a Nike baseball cap — told AFP.
The 48-year-old from the southern state of Karnataka, home to India’s
largest elephant population with more than 6,000 jumbos, 20 percent of the
country’s total, left behind a wife and two children.
As India’s 1.3-billion population grows, people are encroaching into
habitats where until now the elephant, not man, has been king, with painful
effects for both parties.
The Indian government told parliament last year that 1,100 people had been
killed in the previous three years.
The elephants too are paying a heavy price with around 700 fatalities in
the last eight years across the country.
Most were killed by electric fences, poisoned or shot by locals angry at
family members being killed or crops being destroyed, and accidents on
railway cutting through ancient migratory routes.
And Karnataka, which is also part of the wider southern region criss-
crossed by over 10,000 of the mighty tusked beasts weighing up to five tonnes
(11,000 pounds), is on the frontline.
“At present we have an annual death rate of around 30 to 40 people in the
state,” C Jayaram, Karnataka’s chief wildlife warden, told AFP.
– Pachyderm prison –
The Indian government, like many other stakeholders in the complex and
tragic situation, appears undecided about what best to do.
“It is very difficult to escape our population or development pressure,” a
senior government official told AFP on anonymity.
“Unless it’s addressed, all of us just have to learn to live with the
reality of such encounters.”
In Karnataka, forest rangers, mounted on elephants themselves, capture
problem pachyderms, of which there are more and more, and take them to the
Dubare Elephant Camp.
J.C. Bhaskar, an employee at the camp, describes it “like a jail” but it is
more of a rehabilitation and training centre.
“We get the place ready before they are captured, we spread hay and leaves
beforehand,” he told AFP.
“After the resting period, we start taming and training the elephant.”
One of the inmates is none other than Surya, who killed Yogesh and another
man, the lumbering animal wearing chains loosely around one ankle to
discourage him from running.
The 28 jumbos at the camp also draw tourists, with thousands visiting the
lush, riverside camp each year, stroking the animals and enjoying being
squirted with water.
– Broken fences –
However, while such relocations may assuage local anger, officials and
activists acknowledge it is only a stopgap solution.
The only effective method, according to Vinod Krishnan, an activist with
NGO Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) working with local communities, is
better information-sharing.
“Everything else has already been tried unsuccessfully. This includes deep
trenches, normal or solar-powered fences and even fire crackers,” Krishnan
told AFP.
“As you can see, no physical barrier can stop them,” he added, pointing to
the little of what remains of a section of fence at a coffee estate.
His group has developed a simple yet effective system around local villages
allowing sightings of elephants to be immediately verified and passed on.
“We set up display boards around key elephant routes and set up SMS
services for early warnings about an elephant’s presence, which has
significantly reduced such chance encounters,” he added.
This is helped by the exponential jump in the use of mobile phones in India
over the past decade, including in remote areas.
But Girish, half a year after losing his brother and fearing for his own
life, still regularly sees herds of elephants around the coffee estates where
he works.
“Nothing has changed,” he shrugs. “Locals can only keep chasing them away
till they return as, they, like us, have nowhere else to go.”