The word ‘Kaliru’ refers to elephants in Tamil. This film is mainly based on the Human-Elephant conflict. We have shown how humans and elephants affect each other. This is a very serious and sensitive subject. We worship elephants as God every day through ‘Ganesh Ji’ and on the same day in many parts of the country they are abused and chased as troublemakers. Farmers are in the frontline of the conflict, especially with farmlands close to forest boundaries. Poor farmers … Read More
How Communities are Evolving to Deal with Human-Elephant Conflict in Northern Chhattisgarh
The Northern Chhattisgarh landscape is located at the intersection of the Eastern Baghelkhand plateau and the Chhattisgarh plains. The region is drained by the Mahanadi and Son rivers. Geologically, it is composed of lower Gondwana and the eastern extension of the Deccan Peninsula. It is surrounded by the Chhota Nagpur and Hazaribaug plateaus, which are rich in coal deposits. Over this buried ‘black gold’ stand the tropical dry deciduous and mixed forests inhabited by a wide variety of wildlife, including … Read More
Living with Elephants in the Anaimalais (Elephant Hills)
In the foothills of the Anaimalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) in Tamil Nadu, a couple of ‘mango showers’ mark the end of summer and herald the beginning of the monsoon. At this time, the private farmlands that adjoin the Tiger Reserve in the small village of Sethumadai are leased out by their owners to the local villagers – temporary tenant farmers, who work as daily laborers during the rest of the year. They plough the leased farmlands and sow the most … Read More
Against the Elephant: MoEFCC’s Guidelines for Human-Elephant Conflict Management
In August 2020, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) released an advisory document titled Best Practices of Human Elephant Conflict Management in India (attached, right). The report, authored by the Project Elephant Division of the MoEFCC and the Elephant Cell of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, attempts to compile current practises adopted by Forest Departments and other agencies, and is meant to serve as a guide for various Forest Departments working on mitigating the critical issue … Read More
Living With Elephants
In the last few decades, Assam has turned into the epicentre of human-elephant conflict, with deaths and severe damages on both sides. But not all hope is lost.… Read More
A Conflict Tale from Valparai, Tamil Nadu
On 26th August, 2017, we were roaming around Valparai looking for wildlife, we came across an incidence of Human-Elephant conflict. We could sense some commotion near the sheds of some estate workers, and saw people running here and there. Upon checking, we heard that a female elephant had entered the premises of one of the workers and was polishing off a plantain tree.
There appeared to be two groups of people at the scene – one, consisting mostly of youth, … Read More
Capture of Coimbatore’s Crop-eating, Peaceful Elephant, Chinna Thambi
Chinna Thambi, a 25-year old tusker from the Anaikatti region in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, was relocated to Anamalai Tiger Reserve on 26th January, 2018. This was done following repeated complaints by a section of farmers from the region that the elephant was raiding crops and breaking into houses for food. These agricultural lands are adjacent to Thadagam Reserve Forest and Anaikatti South Reserve Forest of Coimbatore Forest Division. Perhaps because this particular bull had never attacked anyone, the indigenous community … Read More
Addressing the Elephant in South Bengal
Harvest season has ceased to be a time of festivities for the rice-growing farming communities living in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts of South Bengal. Due to their geographical location adjoining the dense forests of Jharkhand and Odisha, these districts attract herds of elephants that migrate during this season to raid crops after nightfall. These incidents threaten both life and livelihood. According to S. Kulandaivel, Deputy Conservator of Forests, Urban Recreation Forestry Division and a former Divisional Forest Officer, … Read More
Sharing Space with Big Cats and Elephants — Lessons from Tea Gardens of North Bengal
This article originally appeared in the Last Wilderness on 7th July 2016.
The morning siren at a tea estate factory ushers in a new day in the life of a tea garden worker in the duars region of northern West Bengal. The term ‘duar’ means gateway since this landscape is the foothills or the gateway to the ‘Himalayas’. Historically, the region comprised of prime moist deciduous and semi-evergreen forests in a Bombax (Silk Cotton) and Shorea (Sal) dominated forests. In … Read More
Tragic Loss of a Tusker, Kaziranga
On September 4th 2015, a bull elephant that was part of a larger herd was electrocuted when it walked into a live, low-hanging power cable at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam. The herd was trying to reach higher ground in order to escape from floods that had inundated over 80% of the park.
Wildlife photographer Sandesh Kadur, who was in Kaziranga at the time, recounted details of the accident. Years of waterlogging had eroded the base of the electric … Read More
Inviolate Spaces Act as Refugia for Conflict Prone Asiatic Elephant
Authors Varun R. Goswami, Divya Vasudev and Madan K. Oli use population modeling to demonstrate the detrimental effects of mortality resulting from human–wildlife conflict on long-term persistence of the endangered Asian elephant. Below are the highlights of their study, “The importance of conflict-induced mortality for conservation planning in areas of human–elephant co-occurrence” published in Biological Conservation (Volume 176) in 2014.
A long-standing debate in wildlife conservation is whether we need inviolate spaces, or spaces devoid of human presence, for long-term … Read More
Conserving Species in Landscapes Requires Holistic Planning
Today, a number of endangered species persist in fragmented landscapes. These landscapes house pristine forests (or other habitat), alongside degraded forests, agricultural lands, plantations, settlements and other lands under different forms of human use. These lands can range from the more ‘wildlife-friendly’ coffee plantations, to open lands or human settlements that are relatively less used by wildlife.
Protection of species and habitat within reserves is without doubt a cornerstone of conservation. But when zooming out to landscapes, conservation challenges, as … Read More
Small Dams, Big Problems – Join the Campaign
Small hydropower projects (SHPs) or mini hydels are propagated as an environmentally friendly and socially beneficial option to meet our rising energy demands. Hence, according to the EIA notification, SHPs (capacity not more than 25MW) do not require an environmental clearance, and are legally exempt from environmental impact assessments and public hearing in India. In fact, the government usually grants substantial subsidies and financial incentives to such ‘green initiatives’. However, this notion of SHPs having minimal or no adverse impacts … Read More
The Elephant Conflict Story from the Terai Region, West Bengal
The conflict between humans and elephants is turning very grave, with many human and elephant casualties (numbers can be as high as 50-100/year both sides), and severe crop damage. The situation worsens with fragmented corridors on their migration routes and continuous denudation of forest patches. The added issue of the 17-km long fencing along the Nepal border cuts off their traditional migration routes, pushing them into small forest patches and adjoining forest lands (Terai).
A few days back I witnessed … Read More
Elephants in Chandaka — Banished From Their Homes
With inputs from Aditya Panda.
(This article was first published in The Pioneer dated Aug 29, 2012 under the title ‘Banished from their homes’).
In 1967, a wild tigress from the Chandaka forest on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar walked into the Nandankanan Zoo nearby, lured by the calls of a male tiger in one of the moated exhibits, and jumped in to join him, surely unaware that there was no way out. The tigress –– later named ‘Kanan’ –– lived … Read More
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