Elephant Day 2023: ‘As policies improve, human-elephant conflict worsens'

Most people around you find elephants cute and there is a reason for that. The large animals with big ears and tusks are a marvel to look at. However, a lot has changed over the years for the magnificent creatures. While elephant conservation is of primary importance around the world, human-elephant conflict continues to plague the efforts to protect the animal.

India is no stranger to the conflict and has been dealing with it for many years. There was national outrage during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when a pregnant elephant in Kerala died after eating a pineapple with firecrackers, allegedly meant for wild boars, in June 2020. In the age of virality, there was a discussion about the need for conservation but just like any other event, this too fizzled off soon enough.

Every year, people around the globe celebrate World Elephant Day on August 12, after it was first observed in 2012. It was co-founded by Canadian filmmaker Patricia Sims and the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation of Thailand, an initiative of HM Queen Sirikit of Thailand, to work towards the conservation of pachyderms. Ever since, Sims has seen a lot of change in conservation efforts. However, the conservationist believes there is still a lot of work to be done. While she has seen an improvement in policy-making around the world in many countries, closer home in India, there are still a few troubles in the ecosystem. Interestingly, India is home to approximately 29,964 tuskers, according to the last census released in 2017.

More recently on August 3, the Indian government passed the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill. The bill, which essentially makes amendments to the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, was introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2021, by the Union Environment Ministry. According to the amendment made to Section 43 of the Act, elephants, which are a Schedule 1 animal, can be used for 'religious or any other purpose'. Sims points out that this is simply controversial because of the use of the word ‘religion', as it could affect the conservation efforts.

Mid-day Online spoke to Patricia Sims, co-founder of World Elephant Day and founder of non-profit organisation, World Elephant Society that manages it, to understand how she has seen elephant conservation change in the last 10 years around the world, and India. Among many aspects, she points out that India has a major man-elephant conflict issue, one that needs urgent attention. While she provides solutions that could help in the conservation of elephants, she also expresses that the recent amendment may prove to be a deterrent.

While elephant conservation is of primary importance around the world, human-elephant conflict continues to plague the efforts to protect the animal. Photo Courtesy: Patricia Sims

You co-founded World Elephant Day in 2012. How have you seen the conversation around elephant conservation evolve since then?

The landscape around elephant conservation has definitely changed in the last ten years. Initially, poaching was the primary concern, especially for the African elephants. In response to this fundamental and age-old threat, various governments of the world have been working to mitigate their particular country's culpability by enacting legislation to outlaw the sale of ivory. We saw this in 2016 when the United States passed legislation to install a near total ban on ivory sales, and perhaps more significantly when China phased out its legal ivory trade at the end of 2017. These actions by these two superpowers set a strong precedent, enough so that Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK passed similar legislation. Holdouts continue to be, among other large nations, Australia (which bans ivory imports but not domestic trade); Japan, where ivory has, like China, been considered a cultural treasure for millennia; and Canada.

So perhaps, it's safe to say that the world has really stepped up in a big way in terms of protective policies. However, on the very basic human level we have the very real and up-close problem of human-elephant conflict, which continues not only to rear its ugly head, but is worsening every day due to the ongoing expansion of the human family. Hand in glove with this is the development of essential infrastructure to support this population escalation. You can see how this is crowding out the elephants and forcing them onto small and unconnected areas of land. All too frequently conflicts between man and beast are the result, and the statistics aren't pretty. Or, in seeking to avoid conflict, the elephants must change their traditional habits and migratory routes, which is highly stressful and detrimental to them as well as to humans who are often surprised and dismayed by the sudden appearance of tuskers on their land. All too frequently in search of food, given that their traditional grazing grounds may no longer be available to them, the pachyderms raid farmers' crops, and conflict ensues.

As for how bad things have become, in India in the last three years government records show that 1,578 people have died as a result of elephant "attacks." Indeed, every year these conflicts increase - with no end in sight. However, scientists and biologists the world over are aggressively exploring proposed solutions to the problem of human-elephant conflict (HEC) - including the building of beehive fences, as well as "biological" fences constructed of plants such as cacti (currently undergoing trials in India). India is also planting a variety of fodder crops for the elephants, hoping to divert their attention to these crops rather than farmers' plantings. Providing bamboo balls for the jumbos is another solution that looks to be effective. In Kenya and Uganda, researchers have developed a new smelly liquid that may be used as an elephant repellent.

What are the current issues plaguing the attempt of conservation and protection of elephants around the world? Do you see it happening in India?

Issues that may impede elephant conservation efforts include, perhaps most importantly, corruption; low punitive measures for convictions; a lack of resources to adequately enforce existing legislation; and climate change. I would say these are the biggies that we face when seeking to alleviate the problem. In terms of corruption, this can prevail all the way up the ivory supply chain, from the low man on the totem pole - the poacher in the forest who hunts down and kills the animal - to the ivory kingpin who is supervising his poaching and trafficking networks from his obscure lair in whatever obscure hole he's hiding out in. An abundance of cash or other "goodies" as payoff muzzles these traffickers, enabling them to continue their nefarious activities under a cloud of anonymity. A major contributor to this is the poor economic conditions that many of these poachers and traffickers find themselves in due to the fact that they may live in an economically impoverished country where a little bit of payoff cash goes a long way.

Another issue is the leniency of many of the world's courts in terms of meting out sentences that might act as deterrents to other would-be transgressors. And then we have the issue of a lack of allocation of government resources to adequately police all the ivory transit hubs, ports, and trade routes that the ivory travels from as it makes its way up the food chain. Given the sheer number of shipping containers, for instance, that go in and out of the world's ports every day (and which all too often contain ivory contraband), it's impossible to search each and every one. This is evinced by a recent ivory seizure in Malaysia in July wherein 6,000 kilograms (13,200 pounds) of ivory, along with other rare animal parts, were seized, with a total value of $18 million. That the ivory was from African elephants speaks to the failure to intercept it on the ground in Africa - not in Malaysia, which no doubt was a point on its trafficking route before reaching a final Asian destination.

In India, all of this is definitely playing out there. Odisha in particular, is currently having major problems conserving its elephant population. Recently, in the past two months, 13 elephants have perished by suspicious means (some of the carcasses featuring bullet holes). In what looks as though it may be a part of an inside job/cover-up, forest officials have been arrested. If we can't trust the forest official to do his job honestly, who can we trust?

Climate change is another major impediment to elephant conservation. The Horn of Africa is currently experiencing unprecedented drought, which is causing elephants to die off from thirst and/or to try and find new sources of water. Asian elephants obviously feel the effects of climate change, too. They are particularly sensitive to the climate's extreme fluctuations, given that they, like their African counterparts, require a lot of fresh water daily. Other deleterious impacts of climate change on the elephants are a declining population size, an increased sensitivity to high temperatures, and a decreased resilience to disease. In short, climate change makes the elephants more stressed and traumatised, and that's not healthy for anyone - man or elephant.

World Elephant Day co-founder Patricia Sims (right) says limate change is another major impediment to elephant conservation. Photo Courtesy: Patricia Sims

India has had a programme for conservation of elephants since 2000. According to you, what has changed since then?

There has seemingly been an uptick in human-elephant conflict in ways other than those mentioned above. These include collisions on India's roadways, death by electrocution from electrical wires, and elephant deaths on train tracks. More attention should be paid to these issues to avoid unnecessary elephant deaths. Also, too many people are being killed by elephants when they venture outside at night to attend nature's call. I understand this is ultimately an issue of resources but to my mind, solutions designed to provide indoor plumbing might be undertaken so that the incidence of these human deaths (often of innocent children) are reduced.

We would be remiss if we didn't mention the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Bill that was just passed by the lower house of India's parliament, the Lok Sabha, on August 3 of this year. This bill makes, what appears to have become, a controversial amendment to the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972. This controversy revolves around the use of the word "religious" in the amendment, to wit, the amendment would permit the elephant, a Schedule 1 animal, to be used for "religious or any other purpose". The use of the word "religious" in this context is unprecedented, and the entire phrase's fuzzy language is, in part, what has apparently agitated elephant activists. They posit that the amendment's passage could, among other transgressions, encourage the capture of wild elephants as well as trade in them.

Also Read: Mumbai's little-known tryst with tigers and the continued need for conservation efforts