COIMBATORE/TIRUCHY: A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are just statistics. This quote attributed to Joseph Stalin encapsulates the essence of our times. Were it not for the heart-wrenching image of a pregnant elephant standing in water to ward flies off its wounds before dying, the collective outrage would have easily found another vent. She was not the first animal to die after biting an explosive-laced bait, and she may not be the last. She just became the representative figure of humanity’s ingenuity to devise newer ways to murder.
Biting the bait
Chief Advocacy Officer of PETA India, Khushboo Gupta, says ‘bait bombs’ are not new to the Indian milieu. “People plant crackers in fruits and leave them in man-animal conflict zones. The casualty can range from elephants to boars,” she says. Bait-bomb deaths are painful. In January 2017, an elephant calf bit on one such bait at Seeliyur under Coimbatore district. His oral cavity was severely injured, and his tongue got severed. He could neither eat nor drink and died after two days of struggle. Here too, the bait was set for wild boars, classified as vermin by governments. And, this is a grouse that riles up the general secretary of Farmers Association, P Kandhasamy.
Emotive subject, deadly result
Man-animal conflict is an emotive topic, especially when the man in question is a farmer. A few years ago, the State issued a government order, sanctioning the killing of vermin. To date, not a single wild boar has been culled. It’s in this backdrop that Kandhasamy demands that the Wildlife Protection Act be tweaked to grant the farmers the right to “punish” the wild animals “intruding into farmers’ patta land”.
Kandhasamy’s solution is opposed tooth and nail by Gupta, who maintains ecological balance cannot be reached at the point of a gun. Gupta finds support in the words of wildlife activist P Paul Raj, who says: “Governments have earmarked sufficient buffer area between reserve forests and agricultural lands. However, farmers encroach upon these lands, and often pay heavily for it.” However, with spate in reports on animal deaths, it’s difficult to say who’s paying heavily.
Corridor of uncertainty
Kandhasamy goes on to blame the official apparatus for this state of affairs. He has been demanding a stakeholders’ meeting to find concrete solutions to the elephant incursion into the farms of Chinna Thadagam and Narasipuram in Coimbatore. “We have been demanding the collector to convene a meeting of farmers, NGOs, agriculture department, TNPCB, panchayats, and the owners of educational institutions, who have established buildings on the elephant corridor,” he says. When the traditional migratory route (corridor) of elephants is blocked, their detour often brings them in conflict with farmers.
Cutting cost at what expense!
Farmers employ cost-cutting measures when it comes to mitigating the conflict, says District Forest Officer of Tiruchy D Sujatha. Electric fencing is one such measure. “The available alternatives are often neglected by the farmers, as they think them to be too expensive,” she says. Eminent elephant expert and professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Raman Sugumar points out other facets of the conflict: Biology and better conservation.
“Usually, bull elephants part ways with their families by the time they reach 20-25 years of age. They start roaming in search of food. Attracted by the banana plantations, coconut, and the maize crops, they start raiding the farms. Till about two decades ago, the number of bull elephants was lesser in comparison to cow elephants as they were heavily poached for their tusks. Things have improved now due to sustained efforts, and their numbers have increased,” Sugumar says.
Preying on predators
Elephants are not the sole victims of human activity in the forest periphery. Even apex predators like tigers have not been left unscathed. In April last, a tiger and a tigress were poisoned in the Pollachi range of Anamalai Tiger Reserve. The felines were baited using poison-laced meat after a spate in cattle deaths. Wildlife Nature Conservation Trust (WNCT) founder N Sadiq Ali says: “Villagers kill big
cats to protect their cattle. Often sick and old tigers find easy prey in the domestic cattle,” he points out.
Bushmeat and black magic
What worries Tiruchy’s District Forest Officer is that some of these incidents are not entirely related to crop protection. The thriving and lucrative exotic bush meat and black magic industries could be the driving force behind the poaching of animals, she feels. When a jackal was poached using explosive-laced meat in Tiruchy last week, the gang of 12 that devised the explosive had grand plans for its meat and teeth.
“Wild animals are often prescribed as remedies for various ailments, personal problems, and also as an aphrodisiac. Our informers are too afraid as they fear identification and the subsequent retribution,” Sujatha says. A senior forest official in Tiruchy said that people steal roadkill carcasses and trade in it. Poachers are a slippery lot too. “Miscreants sell the meat to one party and the feathers to another within hours of the killing,” the official adds.
Mitigation starts where?
So, where does the mitigation begin? Gupta believes that adding teeth to the Wildlife Protection Act and its stricter implementation could act as a deterrent. Paul Raj advocates for tighter regulations on accessibility to arms. “Farmers do not want to kill animals. However, they have to save their crops too. The best way out is to ensure explosives do not reach the farmers.
Officials can also keep a stricter vigil to ensure farmers do not encroach on forest land,” he says.
WWF consultant and member of the Asian Elephants Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Ajay Desai bats for merging empirical wisdom with modern science. “We should implement better strategies to prevent elephants from coming out of the forest. Elephant Proof Trenches (EPT) without leaving any rocks in it and setting up solar fencing are the steps in the right direction,” Desai says.
Translocating elephants that are in conflict with humans is an idea Raman Sugumar finds favour with. Sugumar says that forest area in south India has not shrunk. However, vast swathes have an overgrowth of Lantana camara, reducing the fodder availability for jumbos. “We can try fixing hanging fences. Unlike solar fences and Elephant Proof Trenches, the hanging fences cannot be broken by elephants. This method was successfully employed in Sri Lanka,” Sugumar says.
Statistics and tragedy
In a country where sloth bears are pelted with stones, peacocks and tigers are fed poison, and jackals’ jaws are blown off, an elephant had to die to shake people out of their slumber. One death had to be branded as a tragedy to keep it from becoming mere statistics.
Peacocks: Things of beauty no more
Despite all its glory and beauty, peacocks do not inspire the same marvel among farmers. On June 9, an angry Tirupur farmer poisoned 11 national birds for turning crop raiders. Such incidents are neither new nor unheard of. Farmers across the western belt kill peacocks as conflict with the law seems a better deal than coping with loss. The State reportedly releases a compensation that is not commensurate with the loss, farmers claim.