Torches and tension on elephant corridors (West Bengal)
Torches and tension on elephant corridors (West Bengal)
Shrabana Chatterjee, The Hindu
October 27, 2024
See link
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/west-bengal/torches-and-tension-on-elephant-corridors/article68797119.ece
for photos.
In the early hours of August 15, when Kolkata and the rest of West Bengal
was seething in anger over the rape and murder of a doctor at R.G. Kar
Medical College and Hospital, another conflict was raging in front of the
Jhargram Raj College, in a town of the same name. Five elephants had
entered Jhargram, which is surrounded by forests, in southern Bengal.
About 30 villagers, a special monitoring team engaged by the forest
department and locally referred to as a ‘hula (torch) party’, tried to
drive the animals away using sticks and flaming torches. Soon, thousands of
people gathered to shout and jeer at the animals. The forest department was
able to tranquillize one of the five pachyderms, but one got trapped
opposite the college campus. Two men of the hula party allegedly threw
their torches at the elephant, setting it on fire. The elephant ran
frantically, writhing and shrieking in pain as flames engulfed its body.
Three elephants had found their way into the college campus, and amid the
chaos, caused significant damage to the college boundary wall. Then they
found their way out and stood by their injured friend’s side. The elephant
collapsed and died. After several hours, when dusk descended, people left
the spot, and the three elephants silently retracted to the forest. The
postmortem of the deceased elephant on August 17 revealed that she was
pregnant. An elderly man was also killed by the elephants during this
turmoil.
These deaths brought back to the fore the three-decade-old human-elephant
conflict in the south-western parts of West Bengal, often referred to as
the Jangalmahal region. Here, West Bengal forest department officials say
there are 200 elephants across 59,497 hectares of forest.
In 2023, another pregnant female elephant had died in conflict, as per
official data. There have been 99 human deaths from elephant attacks in the
State in 2024 alone. South Bengal accounts for half of these deaths.
Wildlife activists were livid at the brutality of the killing, and
protested locally against the crude practices of hula parties. Hula is a
handmade torch with an iron rod and live fire. Hula parties work in groups
of 15-30 to manage and drive out elephants in the area. They are hired
informally by the forest department.
After the videos of the attack on the elephant went viral, two members of
the hula party were arrested on August 20. A public interest litigation has
been filed before the Calcutta High Court, with the petition claiming that
“not a single official and properly trained personnel was there who
actually knew how to deal with such a situation”. This has been refuted by
forest officials.
Jhargram, located around 174 kilometres south-west of Kolkata has, over the
past few years, emerged as the hotspot of human-elephant conflict. The
large-canopied trees make visibility as low as 5 metres in some places, so
people don’t see a herd until it’s too late.
Movement Patterns
Experts like Professor Raman Sukumar from the Indian Institute of Science,
Bengaluru, say that a drought almost certainly played a role in the initial
large-scale dispersal of elephants from Jharkhand to southern Bengal in
1986-87.
Umar Imam, the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Jhargram, describes
elephants as “sharp, intelligent, and adaptive animals” that have “changing
behaviour patterns”. However, he adds, “Once elephants start liking a
place, it is hard to remove them from the area.”
The forest department and DFO are facing the heat of the protests and
criticism. “The only reasonable way to combat the conflict is to reduce
human-elephant interaction and make co-existence possible. We are trying to
increase plantation, so the elephants have enough food inside the forests
and do not venture out into the villages,” says Imam. He wants to try
energised fencing in places, that will send out shocks when touched, to
restrict herd movement. He admits that many officials do not agree with him
and call it inhumane.
Sagnik Sengupta, the director of Sage Foundation that works on wildlife
conservation and mitigating human-animal conflict, says that using electric
fencing to restrict any Schedule I animal (the elephant is a part of this
list) is illegal in India according to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
People that cause harm to animals under Schedule I may face imprisonment.
Sengupta says that hula parties are only meant to block the elephants from
entering a town, and not to drive them out. He also points out that
according to a 2018 order passed by the Supreme Court of India it is
illegal to throw fire torches to drive out elephants. “The mashaals
(torches) must be used only in an emergency to avoid any deaths and crop
damage that may take place and ensure the proper movement of elephants in
the corridors,” says the court order.
The activist says, “The hula parties work under the DFO and he cannot shrug
off responsibility of the actions under his watch.” The DFO, however,
claims that the flaming torches were hurled without his knowledge and did
not happen in front of his eyes.
The process of tranquillization of the elephant has also been questioned by
activists. When this is done to a Schedule I animal like the elephant,
permission is needed from the principal chief conservator of forests and
the wildlife and the chief wildlife warden as per the Wildlife Protection
Act. The confirmation was only verbal on August 15 and the authorities
later issued a de facto approval on August 16, according to an RTI reply
shared by Sage Foundation.
Over the years there have been many reports of human-wildlife conflicts,
including baby elephants dying after being separated from their mothers,
the death of people, the destruction of crop, damage of houses, fatal
injuries, and more.
Shyamsundar Mahato, 54, is a local activist who says that before the 1980s,
elephants were rare in the area. Even when they came from the Dalma
mountain range in Jharkhand, they went back and never stayed. He claims
that the mining in the Dalma mountains has caused these elephants to leave
their natural habitat and come to Jhargram.
Another reason behind the conflict is the elephant corridors that cross
through human habitations. Data from the Government of India data from 2023
says, “The State of West Bengal had the highest number of elephant
corridors, with 26 identified in both northern West Bengal (part of the
north-eastern regional elephant population) and southern West Bengal (part
of the east-central regional elephant population).” This makes the problem
far deeper than simply controlling elephant movement.
Lives and Livelihoods Lost
Early in the morning when the sun is slowly climbing over the horizon and
there is still a nip in the air, villagers from all around Jhargram head to
the forests to collect firewood, twigs, leaves, or graze their cattle. The
highway connecting Jhargram town to the rest of the State cuts through the
forest. Many communities are permanent forest dwellers, living on both
sides of the highway. They remain at high risk of elephant attacks.
It is a common practice in these areas to defecate in the open, mainly
because a toilet is not available at home or the ones available are not
attached to homes. Crossing paths with elephants early in the morning
catches many off guard and leads to deaths or fatal injuries.
Imam says the highest risk window is between 4 and 6 a.m. when the maximum
number of elephant attack deaths occur. The hula party is especially active
at this time.
Jiten Khiladi looks at the jungles around him and sighs. His brother Chadu
Khiladi, 54, was killed in an elephant attack three months ago. He recalls
with a heavy heart, “My nephew had just opened a small snack shop near the
highway, adjacent to the forest. One night they heard elephants had laid
waste to the shop. They ran to save it. But the elephants had trampled over
everything and killed my brother.” Jiten says he ran to the spot too but it
was too late.
Since then, Chadu’s son has not been able to go back to the shop. The
family is struggling to make ends meet. They got ₹5 lakh as compensation
for the death, but no family member has been offered a job, something the
State government had promised to all families of victims.
The conflict also leads to a loss of livelihood. Shyamsundar has lost huge
amounts of cashew and mango crops to multiple elephant attacks over the
years. He says that elephants have never eaten these crops before, but they
are adapting due to the lack of other preferred food.
Thousands of villagers in the region have lost their crops to elephants.
When a herd of about 25-40 elephants visit farmlands, they leave nothing
behind, the villagers of the area say.
Early in the morning on a summer day when Kalyan Mahato, a 29-year-old
farmer reached his farmland, he saw his crops destroyed. “It was like they
had had a hearty breakfast,” says Kalyan, with a sarcastic laugh. He has
come to accept the loss over the years, but crop destruction remains a
constant worry for him and his fellow farmers.
Kalyan, who is also a panchayat samiti member in Salboni village, Jhargram
district, says that they have now started to adapt to the elephant’s
changing food patterns. They grow crops like bitter gourd and cucumber as
those are not very popular among elephants.
People in the area have now come up with their own ways to protect
themselves. They have over 15 WhatsApp groups where those from across the
region send elephant sighting updates. Though this helps in tracking the
elephants’ footprints, it also leads to misinformation. Many unverified
videos and photographs are circulated that cause panic, leading to attacks
on elephants.
Hula Party Members Face Flak
People in Jhargram say that hula party workers are putting themselves at
risk with this job. Sanjib Mahato, 35, a former hula party member, says
that when he worked in the field to drive out elephants, he got no formal
training or safety gear. Sanjib has given up this risky task after two
injuries to his legs, which forced him to stay in bed for months and
stopped all income for the family.
The hula members are paid a meagre sum of ₹300 per person for each drive.
Sanjib, who has now taken to driving an e-rickshaw after eight years of
hula party work, claims, “The compensation for injury was ₹25,000, but I
did not get any money. My entire team stopped work over two years ago due
to the high risks, but more than ₹3.5 lakh of our payments are still stuck
with the forest department.” Many workers have also suffered fatal snake
bites.
Imam refutes the claims and says that no official complaints have been made
regarding payments and that Sanjib was not a part of his team. He agrees
though that a compensation of “₹15,000 per hectare of destroyed crop is not
enough” and that money can go only so far. “We can never return any lives.”