Wild elephants of the Central Eastern Range in India, pushed out by the ever-growing tentacles of the mining operations in Jharkhand and Odisha, have started escaping into Chhattisgarh. There too, the 247 elephants counted in the 2019 census have a somewhat precarious existence, being forced to move through degraded forest corridors. Their only viable food source is cultivated crops. Access to that forbidden fruit invites retaliation from the farmers. Understandably, from Chhattisgarh, over the past decade ‘vagrant’ individual wild tuskers, acting as pioneers, have started moving westward into the forests of Kanha and Bandhavgarh.
The movement started as seasonal migrations, till three herds of 20, 10 and 8 individuals, making a total of 38 elephants, that had entered into Bandhavgarh in November 2018 decided to stay on. Two calves have also been born there, a testimony to their comfort level in their newly adopted home. In some ways it is a homecoming for them – British accounts estimate two to three hundred elephants in that area in the mid-1800s. After that, they were all captured or else pushed out further east to release their forest homeland for the expansion of agriculture that would yield a higher land revenue for the British. By mid-1900s there were none left in the Central Highlands of India.
Elephants have a massive requirement for food and water for their sustenance. The compulsion to migrate is built into their genetic code to avoid depletion of the natural resources of a particular area. Migration is regular for them and an ecological solution to their vast appetite. Local wildlife in Bandhavgarh would not particularly mind the new refugees. Different in their diets, the local tigers and elephants can easily co-exist.
The problem lies in the densely populated human-dominated landscape beyond the park boundaries. The elephants, as they settle down in Bandhavgarh, will inevitably be drawn to the crops being grown adjacent to the park – a sure recipe for human-elephant conflict. Experience of living with elephants has long faded from the collective memory of the local rural communities. Neither they nor the park authorities are familiar with the mitigation measures that could potentially enable a viable coexistence, if not harmony with the wild elephants. Both the farmers and the authorities are set to be forced onto a rapid learning curve.
Only time will tell us whether the dynamics of wildlife interactions in Bandhavgarh manages to go through a significant change with the entry of this new species into that environment. Or, will these poor stressed elephants also be gradually captured to join the ranks of their miserable domesticated brethren?
Mahendra Singh Articles 