Negative human-elephant interactions in India affect nearly half a million families each year

Mumbai: The negative human-elephant interactions in India affect nearly half a million families every year because of multiple reasons. 

“Human-elephant negative interaction in India affects nearly half a million families every year. Most of the conflict occurs when elephants feed on crops. Annually, deaths of over 500 humans and 100 elephants are reported in negative interactions in India. Elephants damage crops and property worth millions of rupees every year,” says Kedar Gore, Director, The Corbett Foundation (TCF).

The TCF has come out with a compilation Trampled Boundaries, which offers a profound exploration of the intricate relationship between humanity and Asian elephants.

According to him, it is predicted that the impacts of climate change combined with the rapid land use changes in India may cause a further reduction in elephant habitat by as much as 42 percent by the end of the century. Meanwhile, elephants have continued adapting and shifting areas to find suitable habitats beyond their known existing ranges.

The present elephant habitat in India is around 2,50,000 sq km and harbours nearly 30,000 elephants, which is 60 per cent of the current global wild elephant population. Historians believe that in the late 16th century, around 15,000-16,000 elephants were held captive by the Mughals and other erstwhile kingdoms in India. 

“It is also believed that this figure rose to around 30,000 by the first decade of the 17th century and is a good enough indicator of the population of wild and captive elephants in India then, as the wild elephants were found across several parts of India, many of which are completely urbanized today and the elephants extirpated. In independent India, around 4.13 million hectares of forest were lost between 1951 to 1976 due to river valley projects and other developmental pressures, that in turn led to devastating fragmentation of elephant habitats,” writes Gore. 

India has placed elephants in Schedule I of its Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and, since the launch of Project Elephant in 1992, declared 32 elephant reserves covering around 65,000 sq. km., which is only a small fraction of its historical range and just 2 per cent of India’s total landmass.

Although the wild elephant population in India is believed to be stable, the continued anthropogenic pressures of habitat loss, fragmentation, linear infrastructure expansion, changing land use patterns, and increasing human-elephant negative interactions have put the conservation, protection and welfare of wild elephants at stake. Elephant poaching for ivory was a huge problem between 1970 and 2004, till the infamous poacher and ivory smuggler Veerappan’s death. Killing elephants for ivory severely affected the male-to-female ratio, dropping it to as low as 1:100 in Periyar Tiger Reserve.

As the existing elephant habitats face the onslaught of fragmentation and deterioration, the last few decades have seen recolonisation attempts by elephants of their past ranges in some areas in India, including the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Areas reported to have wild elephants in the past were Narwar, Ghoraghat, Ratanpur, Nandanpur, Sarguja, Bastar, Malwa Plateau, Rewa, Raisen, Hoshangabad (Narmadapuram) in the undivided Madhya Pradesh.