WORLD ELEPHANT DAY (AUGUST 12)

From Sampath’s Desk:

 

 

 

   

WORLD ELEPHANT DAY 

(AUGUST 12)

  

Every year, World Elephant Day is celebrated on August 12. Let us have a stock-taking of the status of the pachyderms.

 

August 12 is the day to honour the jumbos, spread awareness across the globe about the critical threats they are facing, and to support positive solutions that will help ensure their survival.

 

While the elephant habitats included mainly dense forests, open and closed Savanna grasslands and arid deserts, key threats to them are poaching for ivory, habitat loss and fragmentation due to human population expansion and land conversion, and human-elephant conflicts. Human-elephant conflict can be categorized into – ultimate causes including growing human population, upcoming large-scale infrastructure/development projects, and poor top-down governance, and proximate causes including habitat loss due to deforestation, disruption of and disturbances in elephant migration routes, expansion of agriculture and illegal encroachment into protected areas.

  

As of date, the world elephant population is 415000 with a majority of them living in African countries - Botswana (GEC elephant count 130451), Angola, Northern Cameroon, Chad, Northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

 

Main Asian countries that have a sizeable elephant population are India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Borneo, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China.

 

India has a total elephant population of 27312 – Karnataka (6049), Assam (5719), Kerala (5706), Tamil Nadu (2761), Odisha (1976), Uttarakhand (1839), Meghalaya (1754) and Arunachal Pradesh (1614) sharing the honour of the first eight high positions with a 4-digit figure in the order indicated. Elsewhere in the world, their population is very less and rather negligible.

 

Needless to mention, elephants are giant, majestic, intelligent, smart, and elegant-looking herbivorous social mammals. Elephants are a cynosure and visual treat to humans, especially children. Although we have many laws, rules, and protocols including ban/restrictions for the protection of elephants, the human-animal conflicts run counter to them. The continuing story of elephant deaths for one reason or another is disquieting.

 

Maintaining pachyderms in temples has been a known practice for long in India, as they are considered holy in the Hindu religion. They have a role during the temple festivals for leading the ceremonial processions. We have to ensure their well-being and welfare, as they are maintained in captivity, something against nature. That is why the Indian state of Tamil Nadu is conducting Annual Rejuvenation Camps for privately maintained elephants especially temple elephants which live in isolation and seclusion away from their natural mainstream habitats. It is all the more necessary as elephants are known to live only in herds. In the camps, they are suitably re-energized and rejuvenated. This deserves to be appreciated.

 

Even in their natural habitats (mostly forests), they face problems of existence, sustenance, and survival due to poaching for the ivory tusks which is of course banned. By the turn of the 20^th century, there were 10 million elephants in Africa. But decades of poaching and habitat loss have taken a heavy toll on the tuskers. Today, their population has been reduced to less than one-half i.e. to 415000.

 

Despite being a figure of traditional cultural reverence - recognized as the National Heritage animal, and given the strictest level of protection under the laws - the Asian elephant is in a lot of trouble in India today. The crux of the problem is one that affects all wildlife in the country viz. land.

With India’s human population exponentially growing in the past several decades, there is an ever-increasing demand for resources. This essentially entails demand for more land for agriculture to grow more food and for construction of roads, dams, mines, railways, and houses. This demand for land has led to the degradation and fragmentation of the country’s forest cover.

 

Elephant corridors consist of linear, narrow, and natural habitat linkages that allow elephants to move between secure habitats without being disturbed by humans. There are 88 elephant corridors in India. Of these, 12 are in north-western India, 20 in Central India, 14 in northern West Bengal, 22 in north-eastern India and 20 in southern India.

 

There are 12 elephant sanctuaries in India (1) Singhbhum Elephant Reserve (1^st elephant sanctuary in India - Jharkhand), (2) Mayurbhanj Elephant Reserve (Odisha), (3) Garo-hills Elephant Reserve (Meghalaya), (4) Anamudi Elephant Reserve (Kerala), (5) Chirang-Ripu Elephant Reserve (Assam), (6) Mahanadhi Elephant Reserve (Odisha), (7) Theppakadu Elephant Camp and the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, Tamil Nadu (also known as Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park) (8) Punnaththurkotta, Guruvayoor (Kerala), (9) Dubare Elephant Camp (Karnataka), (10) Jaipur Elephant Village (Rajasthan), (11) Elephant Conservation and Care Centre – Wildlife S.O.S. – Uttar Pradesh, and (12) Smiling Tusker Elephant Camps, Manas National Park (Assam).

  

The Asian elephant has been an endangered species for at least 30 years now with their numbers declining by an estimated 50% over the past seven decades or so. India is now home to just over 27,000 jumbos – the reasons being the loss of habitat, poaching, railway track crossing, electrocution when they come into contact with electric fence put up mostly to save large green fields, agricultural farms, and horticulture crops, etc. in the areas falling in identified migratory corridors to prevent death of elephants. There are also frequent Wildlife Train Collisions (WTCs) which cost their lives.

 

Of late, for one reason or another, the number of forest animals dwindles. People say that in some cases, since animals visit human-inhabited areas causing damage and destruction they are sometimes forced to kill them for the safety and security of human-beings. But what they fail to understand is that it is only because of the mistakes of man in indulging in anti-wildlife activities like deforestation and massive abuse and misuse of forests, forest products, and wild wealth for their own selfish reasons neglecting to preserve wild-life and wild-wealth - in other words, depriving the wild animals of the life-sustaining essentials like food, water, and shelter in their own home spaces, the wildlife is disturbed in their traditional natural habitats and living spaces and that is why they are forced to venture out into the human habitats in search of their needs without which they can't exist. Moreover, men also indulge in what they call 'hunting' - an illegal misadventure against the forests/wild animals protection laws. Poaching is resorted to as a business opportunity. 

 

Although a good beginning has been made thus far with elephant corridors becoming a national policy initiative and all the corridors across the country having been documented and at least six of them already having been secured, the rising tide of the human-elephant conflict suggests that there is no further time to lose. We need to upscale our efforts to save the elephants in all the corridors across the country.

 

Expanding the existing wildlife sanctuaries and creating new ones hold the key to make the pride animal flourish in the future. There is a never-before felt need to preserve biodiversity, especially wildlife which helps maintain a proper ecosystem.

 

 

(R.SAMPATH)

24/2/2021