Elephants - The Misunderstood Gentle Giants of the Western Ghats, and their Role in Human-Animal Conflict

If you love nature and wildlife as much as I do, then ERC Davidar’s book, Whispers from the Wild, is a must-read. This masterpiece has the power to transport you back to the jungles, to the time when the forests along the Western Ghats were unmolested and a safe haven for all its wild denizens.

A lone tusker - Nagarhole Reserve

So much has changed since then. Reports of man-animal conflict in local newspapers are common and aplenty. Sometimes it’s elephants trampling passersby to a pulp, a leopard finding its way into the city, or tigers attacking forest guards. Davidar foresaw this problem much before it reared its ugly head and threatened to swallow South India’s green cover. A hunter turned conservationist, he dedicated his life to creating elephant corridors and checking trigger-happy tourists. Today, Karnataka’s pride, the Biligirirangana Reserve, Nagarahole National Park, and the Bandipur Tiger Reserve boast vast species of flora and fauna. From tigers and leopards, to elephants and various birds, it fills my heart with joy to see a thriving animal population in these jungles.

That said, the problem of man-animal conflict looms over our heads like an ominous cloud. The jungles need to be respected and revered. Sadly, this sentiment isn’t shared by everyone. I remember this incident when my husband and I were driving through the Bandipur Reserve, and we saw a group of young men taking pictures against the backdrop of an elephant herd. One of the men, the most foolhardy of the lot, got off the vehicle and stood with his back to the herd. Threatened by this, a female elephant let out a shrill trumpet and charged. Pandemonium ensued, as the terrified man took to his heels, scrambling to get into the vehicle. Thankfully, it was a mock charge, and no one was harmed. But things could’ve turned ugly, had the protective mother decided to go all the way.

Elephants are social and highly intelligent creatures. Their extreme intelligence drives them to do things for survival that are sometimes astonishing. A coffee plantation owner in the Kutta region of Coorg in Karnataka, once shared an amusing incident of elephants breaking into a patch of land that had jackfruit trees. Jackfruit, when ripe, give out a strong, distinctive odor. To an elephant, with its keen sense of smell, this invitation is too strong to resist. The plantation owner, anticipating this problem, dug trenches to prevent the elephants from picking the jackfruit. Two days later, when he visited the plantation, he was surprised to find great big clods of earth in the trenches. The clever pachyderms had filled a part of the trench with mud, walked over it and heartily tucked into the succulent fruit. Outsmarted, our friend put up an electric fence with mild voltage, to protect the jackfruit. Much to his chagrin, he found one part of the electric fence flattened by a massive log! The wily creatures had uprooted a tree, thrown it over the fence, and walked right through. The hungry, albeit smart, elephants had had the last laugh.

But not all stories are as amusing. Most often than not, man-animal conflict leads to serious and sometimes fatal injuries to one party or both. In Karnataka alone, over 26 people have lost their lives to elephants between 2001 and 2016. The figure, however, is debatable and the casualties are on both sides. Victims of rapid urbanization, elephants have died of electrocution from high voltage fences that are erected to keep them out or succumbed to cyanide poisoning by distraught farmers who have lost their crops. The root cause of this problem can be traced back to the 1960s when the Hemavathi Reservoir submerged crucial elephant habitat amounting to nearly 22,000 acres. Lush green forests were replaced by roads, railway lines, and agricultural land. Devoid of their natural food and living space, it’s unsurprising that elephants head straight to paddy and sugarcane fields to satisfy their enormous appetite. The areas surrounding Karnataka’s Hassan district have become the hotbed for human-elephant conflict. Despite capturing and relocating the rampaging elephants, they often come back to forests that are familiar to them. The personnel from the forest department are at their wit's end, trying to find a solution that works for the human as well as the animal population.

Destroying vital elephant corridors, human habitation around buffer zones, and disregarding the sacred laws of the jungle are among the biggest reasons for the grim state of affairs in our jungles. Today, the need of the hour is to find solutions, rather than lament over the damage that we’ve caused over the years.

Davidar’s dream of the Western Ghats, unmolested by man’s selfish needs, may be distant, but it is not altogether impossible. If each one of us strives to protect and preserve the natural world that we’re part of, it may not be impossible after all, to live in a world where man and beast exist in perfect harmony.