More or less the same causes account for the challenges elephants face in other parts of the country. Not only are their habitats encroached upon, the 88 elephant corridors, through which the behemoths migrate for food and water, are encroached upon by human settlements and have railway lines and roads running across them. While efforts have been made to ensure safe passage by building over-bridges for elephants to cross railway lines, most elephants do not use them and cross roads and railway lines on foot. Not surprisingly, over 200 of them have perished in train accidents over the last 10 years. Their habitats being encroached upon, and movements under pressure, elephants are migrating to new areas abutting human settlements. Human- elephant conflicts have consequently increased steeply, with the number of people killed increasing from 457 in 2018-19 to 605 in 2022-23. Three hundred elephants have been killed in the last three years. They also suffer casualties as offshoots of wider human-animal conflict. The killings are often done with appalling cruelty. On August 15, 2024, a cow elephant died in agony in Jhargram, West Bengal, after being pierced by a flaming spear by a band of about 35 men forming a “hulla” (loud noise) party—the nomenclature given to groups, armed with mashaals (flaming torches) and tasked by state forest departments with driving wild elephants away from human habitations. In this case, the party was reportedly mobilised by West Bengal’s Forest department to chase away a herd of six elephants which had entered a human habitation and killed a senior citizen. The cow elephant continued to be hit even after she was wounded. Moving forward, dragging her hind feet and writhing in agony, she finally collapsed and died eight hours later despite the forest department’s efforts to treat her.
A report by Jayashree Nandi and Joydeep Thakur in The Hindustan Times datelined August 20, 2024, quoted a representative of the Human & Environment Alliance League (HEAL), a Kolkata-based non-profit organisation, as saying, “Hulla drives happen in mob situations… The elephants suffer emotional trauma because of these invasive measures, in addition to physical distress. There is an urgent need to completely stop the use of mashaals by state authorities to drive [out] elephants.”
The report quoted an environmentalist, who had asked not to be named, as saying, that the whole idea behind having a hulla party was to chase elephants away by using light. “We know that animals are instinctively scared of fire. But we have seen in the past that hulla groups, employed by the forest department, are in [an] inebriated condition and resort to all kinds of horrific torture. Locals are extremely disturbed about this. Moreover, all corridors that can help these elephants escape are now encroached upon so conflict is rising.” Sometime, death is a collateral development. On May 27, 2020, a pregnant elephant collapsed in Velliyar river in Kerala’s Palakkad district and died, after having stood there since May 25. According to the post-mortem report on the tragedy, the immediate cause of her death was drowning. On May 12, 2020, she had tried to eat a coconut that had been stuffed with explosives to kill wild boars that ate up crops. The result was serious, incapacitating wounds in her oral cavity. “This”, the post-mortem report continued, “resulted in excruciating pain and distress in the region and prevented the animal from taking food and water for nearly two weeks. Severe debility and weakness, in turn, resulted in a final collapse in water that led to drowning.” According to a report by Sujit Bisoyi in The Indian Express (datelined November 18, 2024,) , three elephants, including a calf, died after falling into an electrified trap, laid by poachers for killing wild boars, in Odisha’s Sambalpur district.
The question is: should wild boars be killed in this terrible way? The human-animal conflict is making demons out of people. Meanwhile, there is good news from across the border. Under the auspices of Four Paws, a global animal welfare organisation, Madhubala, an African elephant, was shifted on November 26, 2024, from the Karachi Zoo to Karachi Safari Park, to join her two sisters, Malika and Sonia, in open air. One hopes, brought from Africa when young, they live happily hereafter.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer; the views expressed are personal)
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