The April, May, June quarter of 2023, compared to last nine years, has seen a 26 % rise in number of human- elephant encounters which resulted in more human kills and injuries than ever before, a rise of 50% above the highest human kills of last year.
According to Wildlife Society of Orissa secretary Dr Biswajit Mohanty, the escalating figures each year also indicate that elephants are straying out of their habitats more often due to huge levels of disturbances caused by quarries and crushers and night movement of trucks and tractors. There is also a lack of adequate forest fodder and a marked shift towards consumption of farm crops and food grains stored inside villages.
Palm fruits which are their prime source of food during June and July have become scarce due to massive felling of palm trees for inter-State trade to Tamil Nadu. Dhenkanal, Angul and Deogarh districts have lost thousands of palm trees since the last three years as organised timber traders camp there and decimate the trees.
57 human kills this quarter (April-June, 2023) included 14 in mango orchards, three in cashew plantations, seven when people went out to relieve themselves, seven during village raids, three during crop raids, and eight when people ventured into forests to collect firewood, Kendu and Sal leaves, mahua fruits and mushrooms etc.
Among the most conflict-prone elephant-bearing districts, Dhenkanal witnessed 14 human kills, followed by Angul (13), Keonjhar (8), Mayurbhanj (5), Sambalpur (5), Sundargarh (2) and Cuttack (2).
Dhenkanal has recorded a ten-fold jump in diversion of elephant habitat for black and laterite stone quarries, stone crushers and steel/power plants between 2011 and 2021. The Wildlife Wing has failed to take any action in view of growing demands to shut down the quarries.
Odisha happens to have a dubious record of more number of human kills among all other States despite an elephant population of 1,976 compared to Karnataka’s 6,049, Assam’s 5,719, Kerala’s 3,054 and Tamil Nadu’s 2,761 as per the last national level census carried out in August, 2017.
As per a MoEF and CC statement during the first Parliament session of 2022, from 2019-20 to 2021-22, in the three years, 1,579 humans were killed and Odisha had topped with 322 human kills followed by Jharkhand (291), West Bengal (240), Assam (229), Chhattisgarh (183) and Tamil Nadu (152).