Deforestation driving negative human-elephant interactions in Western Ghats, says study (Coimbatore)
Deforestation driving negative human-elephant interactions in Western
Ghats, says study (Coimbatore)
Rohan Premkumar, The Hindu
October 2, 2024
Around 15% of the Asian elephants’ former habitats in and outside the
protected areas in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve (NBR) and the Bhadra
Tiger Reserve have been lost to agriculture and changing land-use between
the 1960s and the early 2000s, according to a research paper published in
Tropical Conservation Science, a peer-reviewed open access scientific
journal.
Even more worryingly, data on negative human-elephant interactions in the
study area, when overlaid with data on deforestation in the region, showed
that 624 of “human-elephant interactions”, including crop-raiding and
elephant attacks between 2008 and 2011, occurred close to or in areas where
deforestation was the most severe, indicating a correlation between the
incidents and deforestation.
The paper is titled ‘Deforestation Increases Frequency of Incidents of
Elephants (Elephas maximus)‘, authored by Jean-Philippe Puyravaud, Sanjay
Gubbi, H.C. Poornesha, and Priya Davidar. It assessed deforestation in the
NBR and the Bhadra Tiger Reserve in Karnataka between 1960 and 2004 and
compared these areas with 624 incidents of negative human-elephant
interactions between 2008 and 2011.
The comparison of the past and recent land cover indicated that a total of
4,023 square kilometres of forests and 2,738 square kilometres of scrub,
amounting to 6,761 square kilometres of elephant habitats, have been
destroyed. Concurrently, the agricultural village mosaic in the region
witnessed an increase by 7,123 square kilometres, mostly in non-protected
areas encompassing 6,266 square kilometres and 857 square kilometres in
Kerala and parts of Gudalur in Tamil Nadu.
The study also found that the annual rate of deforestation between 1960 and
2004 was 0.85% every year. Mr. Puyravaud, one of the authors of the paper,
said the deforestation also led to the severance of corridors that
connected tiger reserves in the NBR with those in Kodagu and Nagarhole
districts of Karnataka. “The extensive forest cover that existed in these
regions in the 1960s, mostly on private land, has been severely
transformed,” the paper said.
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Puyravaud said there remained a narrow corridor
for the wildlife to move between the NBR and the Bhadra Tiger Reserve.
There were other corridors, but they were less preferred by the wildlife
because they were located on a more hilly, less traversable terrain. “As
deforestation has also led to some habitats being destroyed, the corridors
that do exist are narrow and that pass through regions with high human
density, potentially leading to more negative interactions with people in
the surrounding areas,” he said.
The incidents, called “conflicts” by some experts, provoked by elephants in
the studied region are to some extent the result of the landscape having
been transformed for intensive agriculture. The change seemed to have left
isolated elephant populations struggling with the transformation. Despite
landmark legislation for preserving tree cover such as the Indian Forest
Act, 1927, the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, or the Preservation of Trees
Act, 1984, the landscape connectivity of the largest Asian elephant
population and the largest Bengal tiger population in the world have been
severed, the authors noted.
Precautions should be taken immediately to salvage what could be salvaged
and the cost of maintenance of the essential ecological functions should be
evaluated for conservation outside the protected areas, the authors said.
The study also pointed to a decrease in the number of negative interactions
at places removed from the protected areas. They noted that areas less than
four kilometres away from the protected areas witnessed the largest number
of negative interactions and they “must receive systematic and particular
attention”.
The change in land use itself seems to be provoking these incidents and may
expose the population to hazards. This can be the consequence of elephant
dispersal from the protected areas, but it can also be the consequence of
elephant attachment to their shrinking range, the authors said.