On Sunday, Prashant Palo, a 56-year-old forest range officer, was leading a team to drive away an elephant herd from villages in Odisha’s Kalahandi district when a tusker chased him and trampled him to death. In August, H H Venkatesh, a retired forest guard in Karnataka, met the same fate when the animal he was trying to dart gored him. In a country where man-elephant conflict has escalated to alarming levels, the damage is on both sides. One of the major reasons behind the growing conflicts is the rapid fragmentation of the long-ranging animal’s habitats. Mining, industrialisation and new road and rail networks pose a serious threat to the migration corridors of elephants. This has resulted in the loss of lives, increasing crop raids, property and livelihood damages, and retaliatory attacks across the country. The environment ministry says at least 1,581 people died in elephant attacks across 16 states between 2019-20 and 2021-22; on the other side, 274 elephants died in conflicts during the same period.
We can save more lives—particularly of some of the primary protectors of the country’s forests—if the environment ministry’s standard operating procedures are adhered to. The guidelines clearly call for the adoption of a variety of methods to minimise conflicts. Increasing focus on infrastructure, training and technology would go a long way in addressing the issue, too. In states that have elephants, adoption of modern early warning systems to track pachyderm movements must be made mandatory. The Odisha government is running a pilot project that uses a GPS-enabled system to alert villages located near elephant corridors. The expertise of the country’s top research institutes is also available. All this, however, requires increasing financial commitments for which both the Centre and states must collaborate.
The honour roll of the guardians of India’s forests who have fallen in the line of duty is a distressingly long one. The International Rangers Foundation had once dubbed India as the deadliest country for rangers because they face a multitude of threats. From insurgents to poachers, and timber smugglers to wild animals, the risk that frontline forest rangers take on as part of their duty is disproportionate to the resources they have. A path must be charted on which the protectors can safely co-exist with the wildlife they are tasked to protect.