VILLAINS ON WHEELS - DEATH KNELL FOR WILDLIFE?

 

VILLAINS ON WHEELS - DEATH KNELL FOR WILDLIFE?

A pair of elephants on a railway track

Argument Setting

Local people and the forest officials were a hapless witness to yet another poignant scene of gruesome killing of a group of three wild elephants comprising of an adult female, a makhna (tusk less male) and a sub-adult by a locomotive on the 26^th November 2021 night at Mahendramedu near Navakkarai in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. This soon turned into national news. Postmortem report showed that the female was several months pregnant. This meant that the actual casualty was four. This time, the Mangaluru- Chennai express train ran over the pachyderms in the Walayar-Madukkarai section passing through Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, a well-known theatre of rail-elephant conflict, where 14 elephant kills were recorded on the tracks in the past decade. Elephant run over occurs at regular intervals here and is signaling a virtual death knell for wildlife, chiefly pachyderms.

Nearly 30 to 35 km stretch of the railway line between Palakkad and Coimbatore that either run through the Reserve Forest in Tamil Nadu and Kerala or close to its boundary has become contentious between the Railways and Forest departments, because of frequent incidents of trains running over elephants. Along this stretch, about 4.5 km is identified to be extremely vulnerable, where there are six ‘deep cuttings’ and 15 sections that are known as ‘open tunnels’ in railway parlance. These sections have a clearance of barely three metres on either side of the track. This area is incidentally an intense elephant use zone and the animals are frequently noticed to be crossing over the track from the forest block into the adjacent farm fields. The elephants that get trapped in these sections are run over by the locomotive. Despite being identified as intense problematic stretch, why and how these worrisome stories of elephant killing get oft-repeated?

Elephant killed on a railway track

Rail construction in India- A peep into the past

Madras Presidency was the first province of British India to moot a railway proposal nearly two centuries ago in 1832. In fact, first two of the short distance tracks were made by Mr. Arthur Cotton from Red Hills to the Chindadripet Bridge in Madras in 1837 and at Dowleswaram in Rajahmundry in 1845, the first one to transport granite for road building and the second one for supplying stones for the construction of a dam over the Godavari River. These railway tracks got dismantled once the projects were completed, leaving no trace of their historical existence.

When the British laid their first railway lines in India in 1853 for passenger movement, nearly 170 years back, it was with the main intent of expeditiously moving their military, arms, essential supplies and materials across their vast dominion. They ran the first passenger train, pulled by three steam locomotives between Bori Bunder (Bombay) and Thane, a distance of 34 km in that year. The advent of the railways introduced a frantic demand on timber for sleepers and fuel wood for powering the locomotives and consequent escalation of demand on forests- first sign of pressure on the country’s natural bounty. With the installation of Her Majesty’s Government in British India during 1858 following the 1857 Mutiny, expansion of railways received fresh impetus, mainly for strategic reasons. For instance, in the fifty years between 1860 and 1910, length of railway tracks across India soared from a mere 1349 kilometer (km) to a staggering 51658 km, a forty fold jump. A hundred years later, the country’s rail network had grown just only about 2.5 times to about 1.25 lakh km from then on.

Rails as harbinger of development

Road and rail connectivity, combined with the transportation they support are no doubt agents of human progress. They signify a significant development infrastructure that usher in all round economic prosperity to any region. India boasts of the third largest rail network in the world, with a running track length of 126,366 km over a route length of 67,956 km as on March 2020. As a largely populated nation with high human densities and registering all round economic development, the Indian Railways carried 808.6 crore passengers and transported 121.3 crore tones of freight through its daily running of one lakh passenger train trips and about 8500 goods carriers for the year ending March 2020. Such has been the phenomenal utility of this mammoth organization with over 12.5 lakh employees. Rapid expansion of the rail network, uni-gauge conversion and electrification agenda, and increase in the frequency and speed of trains have, however, exacerbated the environmental impact of railways over the years.

                                            A railway track winding its way along the forest

Problem analysis

Railway lines pass through 1500 km of the country’s sensitive wildlife habitats, including national parks and sanctuaries, wildlife corridors and traditional elephant migratory paths in many Indian states such as Assam, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with about 1200 trains crossing through them daily. Such apparently benign linear alignments have broken the otherwise contiguous forest blocks into fragments and are causing havoc to wild animals. Larger mammals including elephants, tigers, and leopards suffered deaths in these tracks on many occasions. Elephants in these landscapes particularly come in conflict with rail, which occur with regularity. Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change (MOEF & CC) reports reveal that accidents on railway tracks resulted in killing of 186 wild elephants between 2009-10 and 2020-21 and train-hit elephant mortality ranked third among anthropogenic causes for their persecution, after electrocution and poaching. This is highly ironical that Indian Railway’s guard mascot ‘Bholu’ is also an elephant. In some incidents, the severe impact of collision with these enormously large animals resulted in the derailment of the locomotive and the coaches.

                                        Bholu, the mascot of Indian Railways in exhibition 

MOEF & CC identified various factors that contribute to the elephant mortality from train hits. According to the Ministry’s assessment, ecological factors (scouting by animals for food, water, shelter, vegetation and their daily and seasonal movement), physical factors (narrow and steep embankments, deep cuttings, sharp curves and blind turnings along the railway tracks), technical issues (speed of train, frequency and time of passage, unmanaged disposal of waste and garbage) and lack of awareness among drivers, passengers and planners lead to the repetition of the episodes.

Positive steps of resolution- But not enough

It is a general perception that there is inadequate coordination between the Indian railways and the state forest departments in the matter. To address issues connected with elephant deaths in train accidents and to bolster better coordination at national and local levels, the MOEF &CC constituted a permanent coordination committee comprising of the Railway and Forest Ministry officials at Government of India level and similar committees of the zonal/divisional railway and state forest department officials.

A range of engineering and management solutions have been attempted in this regard. Site-specific interventions include clearing of vegetation along railway tracks to enable clear view for loco pilots, erection of signage boards at suitable points to alert loco pilots about elephant presence, moderating slopes of elevated sections, widening of deep and narrow embankments, illuminating the deep cutting areas, construction of underpasses, overpasses and ramps to facilitate elephant crossings and barricading off vulnerable stretches. Management regulations cover imposition of speed restrictions in vulnerable stretches from dusk to dawn, mechanisms for alerting loco drivers, conduct of awareness workshops for train drivers and regular patrol of vulnerable stretches of railway tracks by frontline staff of the Forest Department.

Certain local level initiatives have also been launched. For instance, an infrared sensor-linked alarm to the forest staff about the presence of elephants along the railway track, a follow-up message to the railway control room for eventual alert to the loco driver was attempted in Coimbatore forest division with some positive result. The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) introduced ‘Plan Bee’, involving installation of an audio device with a range of 600 metres, which produces the buzzing sound of a swarm of bees, a sound that scares elephants off the tracks. In Uttrakhand, drones are deployed to track elephant movement along railway lines. If only implemented in right earnest, these steps would avert such incidents. Implementation of a package of above engineering and management measures by the Uttarakhand’s Rajaji National Park administration in coordination with the railways provided relief and brought down elephant mortality from train hits to zero in the last decade.

Funds crunch - blocking progress 

Such impressive but sporadic results notwithstanding, the situation hasn’t changed much in many parts of the country. The elephant death toll caused by the railways continues unabated. The Forest departments are starved of funds to meet the installation of engineering infrastructures, which require huge investments. For instance, conservation action on Asian elephants, including strengthening conflict resolution measures in Tamil Nadu suffered a setback for want of release of Government of India funds during 2020-21 under the Project Elephant, a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, as revealed from a reply by the MOEF&CC to a RTI query by an animal activist from the State. Under the circumstances, the Railway Ministry, being a Union Government behemoth can do well by spending a chunk of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds for this right cause.

Legal debate

Once an episode of train hit and run over is reported anywhere along the track, both the railway and forest department officials get engaged in a flurry of activities, including evaluation of the cause of incident, fact-finding, intra- and inter-departmental parleys etc. Post-event blues do not last long or progress meaningfully. Despite declared cooperation between the departments of forests and railways, lot of misunderstanding crops up once an accident happens. From the forest department’s legal position, elephant death is caused due to a negligent act of the railway staff and the concerned person (s) become (s) liable for prosecution under the provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Usually, foresters attempt to slap the concerned loco pilots with a legal proceeding. In the railways’ perspective, the railway officials claim exclusive right of way for the running of trains in the designated railway width within the powers provided under Section 147 of the 1989 Railway Act. They term the elephants and their forest department custodians as trespassers into the railway property.

Thus, the legal tangle turns the issue more nasty and complex. The problem continues to persist under the nose of the nodal Ministry. However, a question crops up in the minds of people in general as to who is the loser in the whole turn of events - is it the wild jumbo or the mechanical behemoth? Meanwhile, conservation minded individuals tread at a locomotive whizzing past on a track, winding through a forest reserve - fearing as to whether it is for moving the train or mowing a wild pachyderm?

In the ultimate analysis, both the above questions must engage immediate attention of the Governments.

Post script: Even I was writing this post, a news report appeared in the media on the 4th February 2022 that the local railway officials of the World Heritage Nilgiris Mountain Railway (NMR) in the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu in consultation with the district forest officials  pulled down a portion of the recently developed revetment wall at one side of the track near the Hillgrove station that was posing a hindrance to the movement of elephants. A welcome act though the main intent of the railway officials might have been to ensure a hassle-free ride of the heritage train. In the process, the pachyderms too stand benefitted.