Talking Point
Dr HS Pabla
When a large herd of over 40 elephants walked into Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) sometime in 2018 and showed no intention of going back, I knew we had trouble on hand. Before that, small herds used to foray into Madhya Pradesh from the east but always went back on their own. Sometimes they had to be pushed back into Chhattisgarh. If the intruders were single or in small groups, they were captured and trained for use in park management. But this herd was too big to be captured and too deep into the state to be pushed back.
I was in Bandhavgarh last month and learned that the current estimate of their population was nearly 70. Eleven of them have died since then in the kodo (Paspalum scrobiculatum) poisoning case. That day there were virtually no elephants in the park as they were busy feasting on ripening paddy crops in the buffer zone. The official who was accompanying me did not have a good idea of how many people had been killed by elephants around BTR since their arrival (he is new to the park). But an old guide estimated the number to be 20-25, which may be a bit exaggerated. However, I saw devastated forest camps all over the park, and thousands of toppled trees. I knew my fears were coming true. Having elephants in Bandhavgarh is nothing to be proud of. They are an invitation to disaster.
We should learn from the experience of others. Elephant populations grow very quickly, doubling almost every ten years, as they have no predators. Chhattisgarh had no elephants in the 1980s. Now the state has 500. Kruger National Park of South Africa also had no elephants up to 1905 when the first elephants walked in from Mozambique. This population grew to 7000 by 1965 where it was maintained up to 1994 by systematic culling, starting in 1967. Culling was stopped in 1994 under pressure from various lobbies. Now the population is estimated to be over 35,000. Scientists have found out that even 7,000 were too many for the park. They based their conclusion on the fact that, despite the culling, all the top canopy trees in the research plots set up to monitor the impact of elephants on the ecosystem had been killed by elephants by 1994. On average, there were 13 top canopy trees in each one-hectare plot when the study began in 1944. With the big trees have also gone the species of birds, reptiles, and small mammals that were dependent on them, including the great eagles, great owls, and Southern Ground Hornbill. Aloe marlotii a succulent plant favoured by elephants, has been completely eaten up by the elephants; it is extinct in the park now. This would not have happened if the population had been maintained at 3000-5000, which is believed to be the carrying capacity of Kruger Park.
In India, elephants kill nearly half of over 1000 people killed by wild mammals each year. Relatively, more people die of elephant attacks in states where elephant populations are small and new. For example, Chhattisgarh used to lose nearly 100 human beings each year when the elephant population was only 200, around the year 2010. Now they have 500 elephants, perhaps the number of human deaths per year is still approximately the same due to some mitigatory measures. They destroy over a million hectares of crops each year while it is difficult to estimate the value of homes and civic infrastructure damaged by them. Thus, elephants are a danger to Bandhavgarh and the people living around the tiger reserve. And the danger is going to grow, perhaps very fast. Even if we do not care much about the fate of the people and forest guards, we need to save Bandhavgarh.
So, what should be done?
There are no simple or non-controversial solutions. Moreover, we have a culture of doing nothing until water passes over our heads. Look at how concerned we are about the fate of the man-eating tigers and leopards when they go hunting people. That is also our law. Therefore, we cannot do anything different. Common sense dictates that elephants should be eliminated from Bandhavgarh landscape at the earliest. Or, at the least, they should be stopped from increasing further and wandering wildly. Killing, capture, contraceptives, fences; there are many ways of doing it. But I am sure we are going to do nothing as all of these solutions are controversial, even imperfect to varying degrees, and we are known for avoiding difficult decisions. Moreover, whatever we do, some people will go to court against it as our laws nearly forbid any action. Therefore, we are going to be content with counting human and elephant deaths, blissfully oblivious of what happens to Bandhavgarh itself and its less glamorous denizens as their habitat is destroyed. In central India, elephants are expanding their range rapidly. We now have elephants in Chhattisgarh, MP, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Maharashtra where there were none a few years ago. All these states are struggling to cope with this new reality. All these states should put pressure on the Centre to empower them to stop this serious issue. By changing the law, obviously.
(The writer is a retired senior forest official and a bestselling author of several books on wildlife & conservation)
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