The Department of Forests, Kerala, wants to burn 8,000 kilograms of ivory stocked in its various depots to comply with the Central instructions, but the Government seems to be facing difficulty in clearing the plan as traditionalists in the State, where anything related to the elephant is an emotional affair, are opposing it strongly.
Sources said it would be extremely difficult for the Government to neglect the objections raised to the department's plan as these had come from influential people like a former Forest Minister and ruling party legislators. But the Government would have no option but to sanction the plan eventually as "ivory is a useless material in the new world", according to the department.
The department came to this decision after keeping such a huge collection of tusks, which could fetch over `80 crore in the black market, in its vaults with round-the-clock security arrangements was becoming increasingly difficult. Presently, it wants to burn at least the 3,500 kilos of ivory kept in the strong room at the department headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram.
The State's Chief Wildlife Warden has written a letter to the Government seeking permission to burn the ivory as the department was unable to provide security to the stock at hand. Though trading or auctioning in ivory was banned by law, peddling of the item in the black market was rampant and it was difficult to keep the stocks safely, the department said.
The material used to be auctioned once upon a time by the department but this cannot be done anymore in the new global and national legal scenario. "You may even say that our men are providing round-the-clock security for worthless things stuffed into the strong-rooms at various depots," said a senior official of the department.
"The stocks are getting bigger as more elephant deaths occur in the jungle as well as outside," he added. The eight tonnes of ivory stocked in the Department depots at Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kottayam, Thrissur, Kannur, Parambikkulam and Palakkad include tusks seized from poachers, collected from the jungles and acquired after death of captive elephants.
The Forest Department argues that burning the entire ivory stock in phases in the presence of noted environmentalists, green activists and the general public can serve as an awareness programme also as it would send out a message to the poachers that they would be indulging in a pointless activity if they choose to kill the pachyderms.
But none of these explanations seems to be enough to satisfy the traditionalists advocating safekeeping of the tusks at a museum or elephant camp for the posterity to marvel are concerned. "Elephant tusks are part of our heritage. It should not be simply burned," says TN Prathapan MlA belonging to the so-called Green Brigade of the Congress party.
One of the first persons to object to the Forest Department's move to burn ivory was KB Ganesh Kumar, who resigned as Forest Minister just five months ago. Ganesh Kumar, himself an elephant-owner, has already written a letter to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy requesting to shift the ivory stock into some museum.
"It seems that these great men do not understand the truth about ivory," says Parameswaran Nair, an elephant-lover from Thrissur. "Every tusk kept anywhere is an invitation to planned jumbo-killing. These people want to keep their fond elephant memories alive by keeping the tusks but we don't keep body parts of humans to keep their memories alive," he said.
The Forest Department is also worried about the practical difficulties in burning the huge stock of ivory in the context of reports from Philippines and Mozambique where the authorities were unable to confirm whether the entire piles they had put to flames had burned out or parts of it had reached the black market as it usually took a long time for the large piles of ivory turn into ash.