Translocating wild elephants- An elephantine task?

 

       

               'When you look at elephant herds that are non-stressed, the males are never around’-  

Mark Shand, British travel writer and conservationist

Asian Elephant- An epitome of charisma

Of the elephants, Mahatma Gandhi once remarked ‘The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality’. My understanding is that he probably wanted to reinforce the thought that Nature has placed every organism in its rightful position; so the obvious differences between a gigantic elephant and a tiny ant can’t be seen as an indicator of inequality, which men seem to have been perpetrating within humanity. True to this visionary statement, elephant remains Nature’s great masterpiece ever.

Doesn’t it reflect the greatness of an animal species that has 45 name equivalents described in a poetical lexicon (Tamil nighandu)? It is none other than Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), the second largest land animal - next only to its African counterpart (Loxodonta africana). Elephant has been a part of human historical, cultural, social, and religious spheres in several Asian countries for many millennia. In strength and prowess, the species has no parallel in Indian jungles. Yet, these charismatic giants - some of the ginormous males weighing over five tonnes- have been tamed efficiently to mans’ benefit for long. Elephant as a mega herbivore represents the richness of the diverse forest habitat it occupies.

Since the last half a century, Asian elephant has been facing serious threats across its range countries due to habitat loss that are escalated by shrinkage, degradation and fragmentation of the natural habitats, poaching pressures and human-elephant conflicts. In view of the global significance of the species, it is listed as ‘highly endangered’ by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The species receives special protection in India by including it in Schedule-1 of the 1972 Wildlife (Protection) Act. For the reason of its intimate association with ancient India’s civilizations and kingdoms of the past, elephant has been declared as India’s National Heritage animal in 2010.

Background

In the historical time scale, Asian elephant was known to have occupied an area of 9 million sq.km, which has of late shrunk considerably. It is estimated that there are about 40,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants in the wild across 13 range countries and India accounts for more than 50 per cent of it. In number terms, this translates to 28,000 elephants distributed in 16 states. Under the aegis of Project Elephant (operative since 1991), the National Forest Ministry (MoEF&CC) declared 32 Elephant Reserves in the 10 elephant landscapes covering an area of 69,583 sq. km, of which only 27 per cent falls in Protected Area network like sanctuaries and national parks and the rest of them in Reserved Forests. As each elephant herd has large home range that spreads over few hundred sq.km., overlapping with many administrative units, management of elephant reserves adopts a core-buffer strategy, with the core areas representing interior forest tracts least affected by human habitations and the buffer zone covering the fringe forests with considerable human presence.

Impact of habitat fragmentation is offset to a larger extent by the preservation and restoration of biological corridors or the narrow passages connecting any two larger habitats called the elephant corridors. These ‘linear landscape elements’ are vital to increase landscape connectivity by facilitating elephant movement between habitat fragments and thus minimizing the risk of inbreeding and extinction, increasing local and regional population persistence and facilitating colonization. Once habituated to use the linear corridor that connects two larger forest blocks, elephants tread the same movement path with regularity. For instance, researchers in Coimbatore found that between Mankarai forest check post and Anaikatti village on the Coimbatore-Mannarkad highway, which is a linear non forest segment, elephant herds regularly cross the road at six spots to move from Anaikatti South to Anaikatti North forests in the Thadagam valley. Incidentally, this site is at the centre stage of our discussion in this post.

Why name the problematic elephants?

In most parts of the country and the rest of Tamil Nadu crop-raiding wild elephants are identified generally by their sex (male, tuskless male or female), size (adult/sub-adult/juvenile) and other peculiar features like size and shape of tusks (in case of bulls), any visible injury marks etc so as to track their movements on a continuous basis. Sometimes, certain unique tusk characteristics assign the problematic bulls with names such as othai komban (single tusk) koodu komban (interlocked tusks), kuttai komban (short tusks) that enable quick identification. Otherwise, traditionally if a wild elephant is captured and taken to a forest department camp it is given a name to monitor its immediate training and future maintenance. But uniquely, people of Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu in the recent past have begun to christen the crop raiders that have established some foot hold and strange interaction with the locals. Thus, the wild tuskers that made repeated incursions into cultivated areas in the recent past were called by names such as Madukkarai Maharaja, Vinayakan, Chinna thambi, Periya thambi, Bahubali, which had become household names over night. Media reports attribute the naming of some of these wild tuskers to one environmental photographer M Abraham Antony Raj, working in the Anaikatti area.

In this post, I have presented a case study of two adult bulls that inflicted heavy damage to agricultural crops in Coimbatore division, which were subsequently captured /translocated/recaptured. Rationale behind decisions on capture, translocation and captivity are analyzed.

Timeline of Vinayakan and Chinnathambi up to their first capture

Vinayakan

There were many things common to Vinayakan and Chinnathambi. Their home range was almost the same - Thadagam valley in Coimbatore division though over a period they have shrunk their range between Marudhamalai and Palamalai. Both are adult bulls with imposing weight and build. While Chinna Thambi was 3.8 tonnes (Age approx.23), Vinayakan (Age approx.25 +) was over 4.5 tonnes. For several months in 2018, they regularly entered human habitations and raided farmlands in Thadagam area. Driving them back to their forest habitat had been a formidable challenge, with Chinna Thambi reacting to the chase and Vinayakan caring no hoot for the kumkies because of his sheer size. Vinayakan had been entering Anaikatti, Mangarai, Periya Thadagam and Chinna Thadagam areas as part of his crop raiding endeavours. As demand from aggrieved farmers for translocating Vinayakan from Thadagam valley was gaining momentum, a team led by elephant expert Ajay Desai was deployed by the Tamil Nadu Forest Department (TNFD) to closely monitor the movement of these tuskers and to make recommendations. The team was initially not in favour of translocating these wild elephants, as it was not considered as a solution to solve the current problem in Thadagam Valley. They based their suggestion on the ground that there has been no study in Tamil Nadu to know the success rate of translocation of elephants.

After evaluating the field situation, Forest department along with WWF-India opted to translocate Vinayakan first.  The trackers spotted him on Mangarai-Anaikatti Road on the 17^th December 2018. Vingayakan had copious musth flow from his musth glands. At this point of time, wild tusker will be aggressive and it is more risky to approach The department swung into action and got the entire paraphernalia ready for the operation. This included an elaborate retinue of field trackers, team of veterinarians, host of forest officials, elephant men with their kumkies with a whole accompaniment of machineries, vehicles and materials. In fact, any wild animal capture or rescue operation demands such elaborate assemblage, besides days of planned and meticulous execution of tasks from each member of the team. Following the Standard Operating Procedures, the TNFD captured Vinayakan on the morning of 18^th December through chemical immobilization, loaded into the waiting truck, fitted a radio collar on him and transported to Mudumalai in the Nilgiris. Later in the night, the animal was released close to the boundary of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) and Bandipur Tiger Reserve (BTR). Thereafter, the field staff followed his movement both through direct sighting and radio collar signals.

Vianyakan after capture- See the musth flow

Chinnathambi

Chinnathambi, then a sub-adult bull elephant was first spotted in 2007 at a place called Thanni Paarai near the Anuvavi Subramanyaswamy temple along the Coimbatore- Anaikatty road. Moving in and out of forests of Coimbatore division, this animal indulged in crop-raiding on and off. He was part of a micro-herd comprising of another tusker, a female and a sub-adult elephant. Having seen the group moving together in their raiding episodes in the villages surrounding Thadagam, villagers identified the two males as Periyathambi and Chinnathambi. Understandably, the habit of raiding cultivated crops in the fringe of forests around Thadagam was imbibed gradually by Chinnathambi from his peer and mentor Periyathambi. He got addicted over a period of time to a menu of agri-horticutural crops like rice paddy, sugarcane, banana, coconut, mango etc., as these crops occur more concentrated in one place and are more palatable. Farmers of the region were up in their arms to translocate the pachyderm to some interior forests elsewhere. Forest managers in their traditional wisdom hoped that Chinnathambi could be moved from Thadagam area into some deep forests to mitigate the problem. Translocation of another adult male elephant Vinayakan from the same area successfully to Mudumalai forests in the Nilgiris a couple of months ago gave positive signal to them. They obtained an order to that effect from the State’s Chief Wildlife Warden in December 2018.

After closely monitoring his movement for nearly three weeks, the Department launched the operation. Chinnathambi was captured from Thadagam village on 25^th January 2019, radio-collared for post release monitoring, transported and released on the 26^th early morning around Varakaliyaru forest area in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve. Farmers felt relieved and the wildlife enthusiasts were cheered. All appeared well with the animal in the first few days of its new home, as seen from the radio-telemetry tracking. Chinnathambi suddenly resurfaced in the streets of Angalakurichi village near Aliyar in the wee hours of 31^st January covering 70 km from Koomatti Parapallam in the reserve in about 12 hours, barely five days of its release into the wild. The explanation was that he was probably looking for his small group.

Chinnathambi being fitted with a radio collar

                                

Post relocation events and aftermath

Let me recount as to what happened to Vinayakan and Chinnathambi after their wild release in a new location.

Vinayakan

Post-release monitoring of the movement of Vinayakan for three and a half months by the WWF-India’s field team from the Western Ghats and Nilgiri Landscape threw several new insights into its behaviour in the new setting. For the first few days of release, Vinayakan was exploring the new habitat in order to learn about resource distribution and stayed close to the spot where he was released. To prove the old adage ‘old habits die hard’ Vinayakan soon moved northwards and began straying into farmlands. Even after being chased back to the forest, he would stay close to the reserve boundary and look for an opportune moment to retreat to the crop fields. Constant intervention by staff along forest border conditioned the animal to keep away from crop fields for days on end, indicating that he could survive without raiding farm fields.

Vinayakan in its new home at Mudumalai Tiger Reserve

     GPS tracking with the radio collar signals in 2089 spots spread over 107 days (19 December 2018 – 4 April 2019) revealed that Vinayakan strayed for crop raids, stayed within 500 m of an agricultural area or moved deeper into human inhabited area on 27 per cent of total locations in sharp contrast to his propensity to crop raid in Thadagam valley. Might be because of anti-depredation pressure built on the animal in its new environment! In this period, Vinayakan covered 413 sq.km of the area, close to three fourth of which was across MTR. A fortnight thereafter, the monitoring team failed to receive signals from the radio collar and the field staff of MTR recovered a tattered collar around first week of May 2019 from the forests. Vinayakan had shed it. 

     More than two and a half years into the region, Vinayakan of late as on October 2021 has been making frequent entry into villages of Srimadurai panchayat in Gudalur taluk, damaging farms, groves and houses. May be he is establishing potential raiding zones in the new home range, where Vinayakan is already exhibiting symptoms of high intensity conflict. Meanwhile, the officers of Gudalur division and Mudumalai Tiger reserve has got busy organizing anti-depredation drives with a host of kumkies and squads of trackers and watchers, something which Coimbatore forest administration was doing in 2018. The position is virtually ‘back to square one’. Is Vinayakan  going the Chinnathambi way?

Chinnathambi

The conflict arena that was Thadagam till his capture got shifted to farm fields around Aliyar and beyond. His movement was rapid between villages, as the animal walked through vast cultivated fields. Between the 31^st January and 3^rd February 2019, Chinnathambi visited at least a dozen villages, feeding on multitude of crops and damaging them too. Meanwhile, Chinnathambi as such a popular pachyderm of Coimbatore region, gained a huge fan following with the fan clubs, a trending hash tag and a Face book page with over 1.4 K followers demanding that he be sent back to Thadagam. On the 3^rd February the elephant took shelter within the sugar cane seed multiplication farm of Krishnapuram sugar mill near Madathukulam, which is 44.3 km away from Aliyar even as crow flies (referenced in Google Earth). It was now the turn of the staff of Anamalai Tiger Reserve to bear the brunt and wrath of irate villagers.

On the face of intense pressure and highway blockade from public, the department engaged the elephant expert Dr. Ajay Desai to study the elephant, who on close observations declared that ‘Chinnathambi looked so tame as a pet and he has no possibility of living in the wild conditions’. He reported that ‘Chinnathambi now doesn’t distinguish between forest and habitation, stays within 20-50 feet of people and his capture is for good’. There are always public spirited NGOs who take the matter to judiciary. In this issue too, two PILs were filed in Madras High Court with diametrically opposite prayers-one by an activist Arun Prasanna from People for Cattle of India demanding not to convert Chinnathambi as kumki, as converting an adult wild animal is the cruellest process ever. The other one by Muralidharan sought an order for the capture of Chinnathambi and to take it to department’s elephant camp. The High Court heard the expert on the 13^th February and allowed the Forest Department to pass orders to capture him and keep in captivity in an elephant camp. Within the next two days, the elephant was tranquilized and captured for the second time and taken to Varagaliaru elephant camp. Chinnathambi has transformed into a fine specimen with all good qualities of an able kumki under the watchful eyes of his mahout and cavady. This development was widely reported in the media.

As a trained and practising forester and wildlifer, I was at a loss to understand as to how the same elephant following a particular pattern in its behaviour for several years can be seen as a varying entity with divergent perspectives by people from different walks of life, who on the face of it appeared to have been championing its cause. In my field postings, I always appealed to the public, media, activists and NGOs to allow the Forest department with their experience and in consultation with wildlife experts to decide on matters, without allowing baseless sentiments to creep in. In the Chinnathambi episode too, it was ultimately the captivity option that was in the department’s priority in the first place only happened ultimately- of course, after an added agony to the elephant.

Determinants for post-capture handing- Relocation or Captivity

Why apprehend capture of wild elephants for relocation or captive management? Is it cruel? Allow the scientific evidence based analysis of the behavioural aspects of an elephant in question, if it has been found to display a complete departure from its natural instincts. Of course, a distinction has to be made between habitual/obligate crop depredators and accidental/chance crop raiders.

Relocation or translocation literally means to move to or establish in a new place. Since the 1980s, translocation has been propagated as a management tool to resolve high level human-elephant conflicts (HEC) involving adult males and as an elephant conservation strategy across elephant range. This ensures the individual to continue being a denizen of the wild, while eliminating the conflict in human-inhabited areas. Captivity is defined as the state or period of being held, imprisoned, enslaved, or confined. While one may relate the process of captivity with an archaic description of imprisonment, enslavement or confinement within the scope of dictionary meaning, it doesn’t exactly translate that way in the context of wild elephants kept in captivity in the Forest department’s camps. Readers will tend to appreciate as they flip through the pages.

However much, the decision to capture a wild elephant is based on intensity and gravity of ground situation, animal right activists cry hoarse demanding that the animal must be left free to continue its life in the forest habitat on ethical grounds. Most often, they drag the Forest department for legal battle by filing Public Interest Litigations (PIL). With no recognition to the fact that the Forest department pursues capture operation with a problematic elephant only after a thorough assessment of its original home range, its general temperament and past behaviour, its social bonding with and its position in the herd, its indulgence in crop raids, presence of health abnormalities or disabilities, if any and the societal pressure. The above determinants usually provide clue to the officials to try one of the two post-capture handling options, namely to translocate the elephant to a new forest habitat away from its home range or to transfer it to one of the department’s elephant camps / zoological park for its further maintenance. In any case, pursuit of one of the above alternate options is keeping in mind the future welfare of the animal and the people belonging to the conflict zone.

 Is captivity the right option? – For and against

In the eyes of law, neither killing nor capture nor translocation nor captivity of a wild animal is forbidden, if the situation warrants so. A perusal of legal provisions relating to capture of wild animals is relevant. Section 11 (a) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 as amended in 2013 empowers the Chief Wildlife Warden of a State to permit any person to hunt any animal specified in Schedule 1 (Asian elephant is listed in this schedule) or cause such animal to be hunted, if he is satisfied that it has become dangerous to human life or is so disabled or diseased as to be beyond recovery by issuing an order in writing and stating the reasons there for. The proviso clauses categorically mention that no wild animal shall be ordered to be killed unless the Chief Wildlife Warden is satisfied that such animal cannot be captured, tranquilized or translocated and further that no such captured animal shall be kept in captivity unless the Chief Wildlife Warden is satisfied that such animal cannot be rehabilitated in the wild and the reasons for the same are recorded in writing. Therefore, it is incumbent on the Chief Wild life Warden, the highest wildlife authority in the State, to holistically evaluate the situation in each case, record his views and then give his decision.

Justification for captivity

1) Why shift the theatre of conflict from one area to another?

Many instances of wild elephant capture and translocation from its original range to a new forest habitat in the past have proved that the attempt in conflict resolution by way of removing the problematic animal from its known confrontation site didn’t result in a permanent solution. At best, it amounted to transferring the conflict issue from x area to y area, as experience proved. Moving the problematic elephant, which is a confirmed crop raider to a new wild habitat, however interior it may be, will more often witness a situation of the relocated elephant returning to crop fields. This is what had happened with Vinayakan and Chinnathambi. This amounts to giving scope for not only prolonging but also aggravating the intensity of the conflict.

Not many instances are forthcoming from any range country or State to testify the effectiveness of relocation. Contrarily, past studies across Asian elephant range nations and states in India reveal that translocated elephants’ lack of knowledge of an unfamiliar range increases the risk of coming into conflict with people in the new area or even starvation to death when confined by barriers such as electric fences.  Of the eight elephants captured near a village in Perak State, Malaysia and released 100 km away by tagging them with GPS and radio beacons, some found their way back home. Elsewhere in Sri Lanka, researchers monitored 16 elephants fitted with GPS collars and translocated from conflict areas into the country’s national parks. This comprehensive assessment of elephant translocation revealed that two were killed within the parks where they were released, while all the others left those parks. Translocated elephants showed variable responses: ‘the homers’ returned to the capture site, ‘the wanderers’ ranged widely, and ‘the settlers’ established home ranges in new areas.

 Way back in 1988, a rogue tusker, translocated from Northern Bengal to Buxa tiger reserve some 180 km away returned to the original location of capture within three weeks of its release, travelling along a mosaic of forests and human settlements. Most of the elephants translocated in the past in Karnataka too returned. Two elephants translocated in 1988 in southern India and released in a different forest area showed signs of disorientation and had to be recaptured and domesticated. In effect, translocation caused wider propagation and intensification of HEC and increased elephant mortality. Reasons for the above paradox are many.

Firstly, it has to be examined as to whether the animal in question indulges in crop depredation as part of its seasonal migration or it has already turned into a compulsive and habitual raider. I can draw examples for both the contrasting situations from Tamil Nadu.

 Scenario 1: Migrating elephant herds following a seasonal pattern

I shall now dwell upon the intrusion of elephant herds into human dominated agriculture landscape, which happen as a part of their seasonal migration with an illustration. Such migration is to a larger extent guided by factors such as shortage of food, fodder, water in forest areas or prevalence of certain adverse conditions in an adjacent but contiguous landscape. Scientists observed a distinct trend of elephant migration into Hosur division in Krishnagiri district through Thali RF of Tamil Nadu from the adjacent Bannerghata area of Karnataka in the month of October every year.

These migratory herds occupy Hosur division landscape almost for the next six months, during which time their entry from forests into farmlands, cultivated with an assortment of crops such as paddy, maize, millets, pulses, sugarcane, banana etc happens almost on a daily basis. The fact that the Hosur plateau is dotted with numerous small, isolated revenue hillocks with vegetal cover in the midst of farm activity help these elephants to return to safety in the day, after extensive crop raids during the evening and night. These elephant herds are known to involve in a reverse migration towards April and move back to Karnataka. I have documented the damage to properties inflicted by these herds for five years period from 2006-2011. This set pattern of migration is accepted as a fait accompli by the farmers and forest staff. Other than resorting to driving back the elephants into the forests and handing out compensation for crop loss, things are allowed to go on as any business-as usual- scenario.

 Scenario 2: A case of compulsive crop raiding

Now let us see how to respond in a pragmatic way when an elephant/ a herd have become habituated to agricultural/plantation crops. I have scripted a book titled ‘Operation Malai’ (2016), a moving story of first ever capture operation involving six wild elephants in one go that too in a record time of 72 hours in India (Link Pdf), in which I documented the movement pattern of a miniscule herd of seven elephants in the Javadhi landscape in Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu during 2012-13. This group expanded its original home range from three forest divisions in the Javadhi in the early 1990s to the forests of nearly 11 divisions in six revenue districts spread over the Javadhi, Shervaroy, Kalrayan, Chitteri hills and the Hosur plateau within the next fifteen years. While the closely knit family group of six, comprising three males (approximate age of 9, 7 and 3 years) and three females (approximately of 22, 9 and 5 years) spent substantial amount of time along the periphery of the forests and stayed in proximity to the agricultural fields, the lone adult bull was in solitary sojourn and confined to the upper plateau of Javadhi hills. Over a period of 23 years (1990-2013), this herd had been responsible for 2973 cases of crop and property damages, 25 cattle deaths, besides 6 numbers of human injuries and 24 human deaths.

The proclivity of these elephants to raid crops has brought them into serious conflict with villagers over a vast area, who demanded their removal from the respective area. When consulted, elephant expert Prof Raman Sukumar opined that ‘forest habitats of these hill ranges with an approximate extent of 2,000 sq.km have adequate browse and graze resources and water to satisfy the need of this small herd of elephants. Thus, it is difficult to believe that crop raiding by this group is out of necessity or lack of resources in their natural habitat. It is logical, therefore, to infer that these elephants have become addicted to a diet of agricultural crops as these are more attractive, palatable and nutritious’.

Movement pattern of Javadhi elephant herd

    

My analysis too confirmed this observation. With inputs from field records, I analysed the daily observed movement of this herd over a period of two months between April and June 2012 in GIS platform. Amazingly, these animals covered nearly 595 km distance in 63 days, logging on an average of about 10 km daily. The herd travelled 56 per cent of the total distance in areas outside forests. The expert suggested that under the given circumstances, the best option would be to capture the elephants and relocate them to an alternate suitable habitat or keep them in captivity in the elephant camps of the department. As in the assessment of the department, the herd has turned into obligate crop raiders, the department picked the second choice and resorted to their capture and transfer to Mudumalai and Anamalai camps following Standard Operating Procedures.

Secondly, the compatibility of the animal to the new forest home in which it has been proposed to be translocated needs to be evaluated even prior to the operation. For instance, the issue of how an elephant using all along a low level dry mixed deciduous, thorn and scrub forest as obtained in the outer margins of the Thadagam valley in Coimbatore forest division with its accompanying natural elements like availability of forage base and water can quickly adapt to the high elevation moist and dry deciduous and savannah forests of upper reaches of the Anamalai or the mid-elevation Mudumalai has to be examined. Particularly, decision to transfer a wild elephant from the north of 40 km wide Palghat gap (Coimbatore division) to the south of it (Anamalai) in Western Ghats requires introspection in the context of possible genetic mix-up with the wild population south of Palghat gap. After all, these two areas though falling within a common administrative unit namely a revenue district, they represent totally two different elephant landscapes viz., Bhramagiri-Nilgiri-Eastern Ghats landscape and Anamalai-Nelliampathy-High Range landscape, respectively.

Thirdly, the animal’s present social position and behaviour in its herd form one of the important determinants in capture. In the wild, bulls lead solitary lives with temporary associations with other males. In the case of Chinnathambi, it was mostly found in the company of another bull, a mother and calf elephants-apparently a rare bonding. Under the circumstances, it is expected that such male would wander in its new location, chart a route back to its old home range in search of his associates. In the process, the animal will eventually come in contact with farm fields and human habitations. Rather, a lengthy script to justify captivity. Isn’t it?

2) Why put the beleaguered animal to peril by way of adverse responses from people?

With the decline in the extent of inviolate habitat for elephant leading to increase in human-elephant co-occurrence areas, human-elephant conflict registers rising trends. Indian people inherited the tradition of showering their love for wild animals from time immemorial. A ‘live and- let- live’ policy underpins life in forest fringe villages across the country. However, crop and property loss and human death or injury from elephant attack beyond certain thresholds could turn the community acceptance to intolerance, leading to antagonistic feeling towards the animal. The elephant might sustain injury or face death accidentally at the hands of the angered public. Even one person is enough to put an elephant down by any illegal means. Vulnerable farmers erect directly charged power fence to protect their crops. And electrocution can result in the death of a raiding elephant. A study by Delhi-based Wildlife Protection Society shows that 355 elephants across the country died from deliberate or accidental electrocution between 2010 and 2016.   

It is common to see pellet injuries from unlicensed muzzle load guns on the bodies of crop raiding elephants. An adult makhna elephant (tusk less male Asian elephant) that was proclaimed as a human killer, credited with over a dozen human deaths in Gudalur region of the Nilgiris and the adjacent Wyanad in Kerala was ordered to be shot in Kerala. When it was moving around Gudalur, Tamil Nadu Forest department captured it and brought to the Mudumalai camp during 1998. This animal was found bearing scores of bullet wounds all through its body, obviously from the many gunshots fired by the farmers of the area. A trend of embedding some crude but powerful country bomb into enticing jack, pine apple or mango fruits is an often reported practice to injure the wild elephants raiding the plantation/farm areas, which cause irreversible damage to the elephants and their ultimate death.

            Elephant invading into farm fields may sometimes sustain accidental fall into an active or abandoned well without proper parapet wall, leading to the death of the animal unless attended to immediately.  Even a small jump in mortality rate in slow reproduction species such as elephant may cause substantial decrease in population size. All these will have serious ramifications on the long-term persistence of elephant populations.

3) Give the elephant an extended tenure of productive life

Interning a wild elephant in a camp of the Forest department amounts to semi-wilding through elephant homes established in the forest settings- unlike what people generally visualize about elephants in captivity. Their perception about captive elephants stem from their knowledge about the treatment meted out to elephants under the charge of religious institutions or private owners- animals made to stand in a 15x15 feet granite floor all through the day, parading through busy market lanes and making them collect money and food in the guise of blessing people, walking them long distances on asphalt roads for festivals and social functions and so on. If one has some idea about elephant camps of the forest department, one would appreciate the enormous freedom that these camp inmates enjoy here.

State Forest departments of elephant range states across the country generally maintain a stock of elephants in their camps since long. The stock for these camps come from orphaned calves, injured animals abandoned by the herd, elephants rescued from critical distress conditions, captured crop raiders and the recruits born in the camps. Elephant men comprising of mahouts and cavadies take excellent care of the individual camp elephant under their charge and the camps are efficiently managed by foresters and veterinarians following a well laid down package of practices. The calves and juveniles get trained easily. May be the adult and sub-adult new entrants get some sort of punishment from their trainers by way of canning during their probation (that is the 3-5 months duration when they are put inside the kraal) in order to enforce discipline and obedience to the master’s commands? One would be surprised to note that the department opens and maintains service register for each camp elephant and they are put on pension at 58 years. Aren’t they too government servants?

Camps of most states are ripe with experience and wisdom of over a century and reader would be interested to learn, for instance, that an elephant circular was issued as far back in 1909 in Anamalai, Madras Presidency by the then District Forest Officer P.M.Lushington that elaborated the dos and don’ts regarding elephant camp management. In addition to allowing a semi-wild habit in the day, the trained elephants are permitted to forage in the forests during nights. As a routine, the elephant men track their charge and bring it back to the camp in the morning. This practice generally enables the males and females in the camp to continue their productive, breeding life through their cohorts in the wild and from among the camp inmates, facilitating new recruits. When you see that most elephants in Forest department camps live much longer than their relatives in the wild, it indicates that they are tended and cared well in the elephant homes. That the killer adult makhna captured in Gudalur in 1998, treated for wounds, christened as ‘Murthy’ and trained by a team of elephant men at Mudumalai evolved into a ‘gentleman elephant’ within a year of internship stands testimony. He is now +65. It might not be out of place to quote the life of one Mudumalai camp’s female elephant ‘Rathi’ that lived up to 81 years. This elephant owned a ‘track calving history’ giving birth to 10 calves between 1950 and 1987 and allo-mothered 25 abandoned and orphaned calves during her life-time. So much to vote for captivity of a wild elephant after capture, when the translocation proved futile!

4) Save the human resource of the department for other most priority tasks

We have seen that translocated elephants more often come into conflict with people at the place of release and field staffs of the respective release area are to be mobilized for mitigation. It is not that anti-depredation drives come at no cost. Large scale investment of its human capital for minimizing the impacts from the conflict is certainly at the cost of man power investment in other critical conservation needs of the area. Demand for conflict mitigation efforts in a region usually far out stretches the capacity of the frontline field staff, straining their physical and psychological conditions.

    When a capture and re-capture (in the event of a failed relocation attempt) operation is taken up, chain of interconnected activities call for engagement of whole battery of resources- men, machinery, material and money. The enormity of resource requirement for such operations is clearly discernible from the capture of six wild elephants from the Javadhi area of Tamil Nadu during 2013.  In that single operation spanning over three days, a team of 367 members comprising of a core group of four officials, 165 forest frontline staff, 82 elephant men and trackers, eight veterinarians and veterinary assistants, 111 staff of line departments besides five trained elephants were deployed. With 16 hours of daily work, this meant a total of about 1,101 man days and 17,616 hours of dedicated team work. An elephantine task indeed!

 Arguments against captivity

1) Impacts on population dynamics

It was argued that the removal of two male elephants Vinayakan and Chinnathambi from Thadagam valley would create a greater impact inside the forest than outside it. According to conservation biologists, implication of such selective removal of potent breeding bulls of their age from the same forest belt within a span of two months can be huge for the population dynamics and demography of elephants. This upsets the number of males available for mating with wild cow elephants in esterus and thus adversely affects the recruitment of calves into the population. Allowing them to live in their original home range will be ideal to keep the male-female ratio in a good balance.

 2) Wild elephants get tortured and are kept in confinement

Those opposing the captivity option argue that a captured elephant is restrained in a 15x15x15 feet wooden enclosure (kraal) for a good length of 3-5 months in the name of training at the expense of the unbridled freedom it enjoyed hitherto in its wild habitat. To them, it is cruel treatment to the animal. Taming of wild instincts in an elephant requires rigorous disciplining through a regimen of confined life style for a brief spell. With most wild pachyderms averse to human nearness, the firm wooden enclosure is the only possibility to keep it near the man (mahout/cavady), yet separating them, technically. The unsettled animal can still attempt to charge its mahout or cavady, if they get too close. These tasks become relatively easy with a captured elephant, if it was not averse or friendly to humans and partially domesticated before being lodged in the kraal, something that happened with Chinnathambi.

The keepers put in charge of the trainee elephant have many uphill tasks at hand: i) to take care of the feed requirements of the animal by timely feeding ii) to keep the animal in a calm temperament and prevent it from injuring itself in the wooden enclosure or the men iii) to make it learn the commands taught by the mahout. For instance in Tamil Nadu, these instructions include a total of 48 commands, of which 35 involve only positive reinforcement and the rest both positive and negative reinforcement with mild punishment for which they use only a stick. In certain states like Kerala, mahouts are seen using ankush, instead. India is in fact the apparent mother of mahoutship with men, hailing from local tribal communities with generations of elephant keeping wisdom. Most times, in the department’s camps, a mahout retains his elephant throughout its working life or service years and both of them develop a strong bonding and affinity to each other. With sporadic reports of cruelties being inflicted upon elephants by mahouts, Project Elephant, the national Ministry’s flagship programme for elephant conservation urges that the old traditions of compassion and kindness to the elephants have to be restored through regular training programmes for mahouts.

End Notes

So, is translocation an efficient tool for resolving Human Elephant Conflict (HEC)?

Human Elephant Conflict, besides putting the lives and properties of people in certain zones of elephant states at risk, is also threatening the very survival of the endangered Asian elephants.

 While translocating ‘problem-elephants’ is touted as an important HEC mitigation strategy, past efforts in relocating the problematic elephants from intense conflict areas to alternate forest habitats have not yielded desired outcomes. Rather, translocation has caused intensification of HEC and increased elephant mortality. It is something akin to ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul’.

With a confirmed and obligate crop raiding elephant, the best solution in hand would be to exercise the option of capture and transfer to the Forest department camps for captive maintenance in view of its obvious advantages.

Newer management interventions are needed to be tested in wild elephant translocation process. The protocol could include ‘soft release’ using an enclosure of appropriate extent, with adequate natural graze/browse and water resources at the proposed release site. Here the elephant can be kept for a brief period to acclimatize the animal to the new habitat and sense the smell of local elephants of the area. The elephant can then be released into the wild to ensure that the elephant settles down in its new landscape. This would augur well for the long term elephant conservation goal.

Even as our memories of Chinnathambi and Vinayakan pale into oblivion, we will have fresh issues arising out of another elephant somewhere else that begin to engage our attention. This time, it could be a Karumburaja or Cholaraja! (Imaginary names, of course). The fact remains that elephants will continue to be a part of human inhabited landscapes in the years to come and co-habitation seems to have emerged as a watch word for the continued existence of both the species - Elephas maximus and Homo sapiens.

I conclude with a quote. Sensing the vulnerability of elephant populations in the face of human progress and the increasing threat to their survival, Sir David Attenborough , Britain’s natural historian and author wondered ‘The question is are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

References

Human Wildlife Conflict in India (2017). One human killed every day. Associated Press, New Delhi. August 1, 2017

Lahiri Chaudry (1993). Problem of Wild elephant translocation. ORYX Vol 27 No 1 January 1993 pp 53-55. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

Prithiviraj Fernando, Peter Leimgruber, Tharaka Prasad, and Jennifer Pastorini. (2012). Problem-Elephant Translocation: Translocating the Problem and the Elephant? PLOS ONE  www.plosone.org  December 2012  Volume 7 (Issue 12) p. 9

Shantha Thyagarajan (2021). Six Kumki Elephants Deployed To Monitor Movement Of Wayward Tusker Vinayakan, Times of India, Updated: Oct 23, 2021

Sekar, T. (2017). Conservation Conundrum - Journey of India’s Wildlife through Ages, Notion Press, Chennai. P 368

Sekar, T. (2014). Operation Malai- A case study of translocation of six wild elephants from the Eastern Ghats region in Tamil Nadu. Indian Forester, 140 (10):945-53

Sekar, T. (2016).  Operation Malai: One Mission- Many lessons. R.R.Screens, Chennai. P 52

Sekar, T. and N. Kalaivanan (2004). A new experience in rehabilitation of an orphaned elephant calf in Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary. Indian Forester, 130 (10): 1091-94

The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 - As amended in 2013. (2015) Universal Law Publishing, Gurgaon. P 204                          

Why translocating elephants may not be the ideal way out of man-animal conflict? The News Minute, March 26 , 2019

World Wildlife Fund- India (2019) Is translocation a way out of rising Human-Elephant Conflict in India? - A case study on Vinayaga. https://www.wwfindia.org/news_facts/

105 best elephant quotes you won’t forget. https://kidadl.com