Even as the heart-wrenching death of a male tusker while he was crossing over the railway fence to save his life from villagers in Karnataka’s Nagarhole National Park on Saturday has shocked the wildlife lovers, various data shows that this incident just adds up to the long list of elephant deaths reported from across the country.
According to the statistics, electrocution, train accidents, poaching, habitat loss and poisoning are taking toll on the jumbos whose number has declined from around 30,000 in 2012 to 27,312 in 2017. In other words, the country has lost 2,330 jumbos in six years.
“The way we are losing, killing elephants is heart-rending. So deep rooted in our culture, held sacred. Intelligent, empathetic, social …yet, this is the sorry fate of our National Heritage Animal,” tweeted author and conservationist Prerna Bindra, calling the Nagarhole National Park incident ‘heart-broken.’
This is what happens when we block elephant passages, she said asserting that elephants are wide ranging animals, who need to move given they are copious consumers, and seed dispensers shaping forests and eco-systems as they travel. She has filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking removal of spikes and other artificial objects as fences to allow free movement of the elephants.
Elephants move long distances and such artificial barriers at times can have an adverse effect, she said.
Biologist with Wildlife Conservation Society India Vidya Athreya? tweeted, “The railway sleeper fences, has not decreased conflict and has worsened the life of elephants. …Lord Ganesha forgive us for the way we Indians treat our elephants...” In fact, last week in Karnataka a tusker was killed after it was hit by a train at Kakanamane near Bage in Sakleshpur taluk. The incident came a few months after when two elephant calves died near Yedakumari on June 3, 2018.
The elephants in the neighbouring State Odisha too are unsafe. In the latest incident, in Kamalanga village in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district, seven elephants died of electrocution on October 26, 2018. As per the State Forest Department, 109 elephants died of electrocution over nine years to 2018; that is 12 elephants a year or an elephant monthly.
Within nine months — between April and mid-December this year — 65 elephants have already lost their lives, with 62 of them succumbing to man-made causes.
In the first 10 months of this year, 38 elephants have died in Assam. According to a December 2017 study by Aaranyak, a wildlife NGO based in Guwahati, between September and December 2017, at least forty elephants succumbed to unnatural causes--electrocution, poisoning, collision with speeding trains, and accidents when the animals walked into ditches in tea estates and constructions sites and other man-made structures.
As per the Synchronized Elephant Population Estimation India, a report by the Elephant Division of the Union Environment Ministry, “as a consequence of being squeezed out of their homes and migratory routes, India, home to the world’s largest population of Asiatic elephants (27,312), also ranked first globally over five years to 2017 by elephant deaths.”
During the release of the report here last year, Elephant expert and head of Asian Nature Conservation Foundation (ANCF) R Sukumar had warned that as the elephants are expanding to new areas, it could lead to more human-animal conflicts.
“This expansion has been happening gradually over 30 years. It is worrying because it will be difficult to manage. The real challenge is that elephants are moving to other forest areas, which could increase the potential for conflicts with humans,” he had said suggesting that the maintaining elephant corridors is need of the hour to save both elephants and humans.
Authored by experts and published by the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) in collaboration with Project Elephant and the UK-based NGO Elephant Family, ‘Right of Passage’, an 800-page study identifies and records details pertaining to 101 elephant corridors across India.
Of these 101 corridors, 28 are located in south India, 25 in central India, 23 in northeastern India, 14 in northern West Bengal and 11 in northwestern India, it has pointed out.