On October 13, 2010, the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife accepted the recommendation given by the 12-member Elephant Task Force — constituted by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MOEF) — that elephants would be given the status of National Heritage Animals.
Still, the suffering of elephants is apparent around the country. Some are kept captive in zoos, some in circuses, some in temples, some used for begging in urban areas, some poached, some made victims of bombs… the list of atrocities inflicted on elephants in India carries on. The question here is: Where exactly did we go wrong. Not so long ago, elephants in India were treated with respect.
Anushree Sahai, who grew up in the tea gardens of Assam, remembers the days when it was common to see elephant herds walking through tea gardens, along roads or hillsides. “You could always tell when a herd had passed by because of the fallen trees. These trees would be the ones that could not bear the brunt of elephantine bodies rubbing against them to relieve itchy backs. Often, when she and her parents would be returning home from neighbouring towns or other tea gardens, they would find elephant herds seated in the middle of the road, hindering traffic, much like cows seated or wandering on city roads today. She and her parents would have to wait till the herd got up and moved away. Sometimes, this could even take till morning.
Cut back to the present: Early January 2012, concerned about the increasing number of elephant deaths around the country, the Karnataka High Court directed the state and Union governments to constitute a task force comprising experts from various fields to specify short-term and long-term steps to look into and prevent elephant deaths.
India has more than 50 per cent of the wild elephant population and about 20 per cent of the captive elephant population of Asia. A survey by Project Elephant in 2000 found a total of 3,400 domesticated elephants: 2,540 privately owned, 190 in temples, 480 with forest departments, almost 150 in zoos and circuses. By 2009, about 700 elephants were in captivity across the state of Kerala: about 260 with the Devaswoms (temples) and 440 individually owned.
Hindus worship Lord Ganesh, the elephant god. There are special pujas only for Ganesh, and no religious occasion is said to be complete without invoking a special prayer for Lord Ganesh. Yet the condition and treatment of elephants in India is anything but god like.
Elephants at temples are traditionally kept shackled with chains attached to a front and a hind leg, sometimes even to three legs. They can lie down, but only with difficulty, and they can move only about one metre forward and backward. They suffer from skin ailments, eye infections, cataracts and diseases of the foot.
Elephants are social creatures, and in the wild, the females live in close-knit family groups. They spend about 18 hours a day walking, feeding, bathing in waterholes and interacting with one another. They are intelligent and sensitive, and they mourn the loss of relatives, just as humans do. Captive conditions fail to provide an interesting, stimulating, rewarding environment for elephants.
In the wild, elephants range over a living space of approximately 200 square kilometres. But in captivity they are confined to a living space of less than 15 square meters each.
The methods used to control elephants are very cruel and threaten the mahouts as well. Hands-on training requires keepers to maintain absolute dominance over the elephants. To achieve this, keepers initially inflict pain on the elephants and then reinforce their dominance by threatening them. This results in confusion and fear and disrupts the elephants' natural behaviour. Elephants also have a natural desire to challenge other elephants within their group for a higher status as they mature. This can lead to unpredictable bouts of aggression, which are extremely dangerous to keepers and have led to many deaths and injuries.
It is not just captive elephants who suffer. Their free roaming cousins fare no better. Elephants face threats around the country from large-scale habitat degradation, loss of habitat quality, fragmentation, and conflict with humans.
Added to this list is another threat of collisions with trains. According to the report entitled “Gajah — Securing the Future for Elephants in India", compiled by the task force formed by the MOEF, elephants have been mowed down by trains in states like Assam, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Orissa.
Assam has earned the distinction of having the largest number of elephant deaths as a result of collisions with trains. About 36 per cent of the elephant deaths on rail tracks have been reported in Assam, followed by 26 per cent in Bengal. Around 12 elephants have been killed in the last few years in the Chakardo area near Deepor Beel, close to Garbhanga reserve forest in Assam and since 2003, 19 elephants have been killed by trains in the area of Siliguri Junction-Alipurduar section, which cuts across forests in the Dooars. The reason cited is lack of co-ordination between the railways and the forest department.
Elephants cross railway tracks searching for food, water and forestland for shelter. They face danger from trains each time they do this. To compound this danger, some of the tracks running through the elephant corridors are elevated and curved. The drivers of speeding trains say this makes it difficult for them to see the elephants till it is too late. Trains are supposed to maintain a speed of 20 to 40 km, which they rarely do.
Sadly, most of the deaths keep occurring at the same points, since many elephant corridors go across the tracks. The forest department and the railways have identified 23 such accident-prone areas in Assam alone.
In the worst tragedy ever, seven elephants, including two babies and five adults were killed when they were hit by a speeding goods train in September 2010. The elephants were trying to help two of their babies who were trapped on the tracks in a densely forested area in the northern district of Jalpaiguri, where over 20 elephants had already died in the past one year.
The adults had crowded around the babies to protect them when the train hit them. According to Atanu Raha, chief conservator of forests for West Bengal, “Five elephants died immediately on the track while two others succumbed to their injuries a few hours later." The surviving members of the herd stayed at the accident scene till the morning, watching and mourning over their dead and injured companions. An elephant was killed by a speeding goods train near Jorhat, Assam, in December 2011. A 30-strong elephant herd came out from the nearby Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary when the mishap occurred.
Research has revealed that mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes TB can spread to humans from elephants. According to reports, of 387 captive elephants examined for the infection of tuberculosis, 59 elephants (15.24 per cent) were found to be suffering from the disease in south India. Owners of most of these infected animals were not aware of the problem and the elephants were not being provided with medical treatment.
Elephants can also cause other zoonotic diseases like anthrax, mycobacterium bovis (cause of bovine TB which can be passed to humans), poxvirus infection (similar to cowpox) and salmonellosis.
In 2009, the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), after a five-year study by a citizens' committee, which found zoo life can be profoundly unhealthy for the animals, ordered that almost 150 elephants be removed from our zoos and circuses. Unfortunately, these elephants have had no place to go till now. But with a rehabilitation centre coming up in Bangalore, things might look up for elephants. Read the full report here.
Source: by Anuradha Sawhney, mydigitalfc.com.
