Editorial: Keeping India’s jumbos safe

In what seems to be another tragic reminder of human-animal conflict, three female elephants were electrocuted this week, after they accidentally came in contact with an illegal electric fence erected at a farm near Marandahalli in Dharmapuri district. The incident occurred on Tuesday when a herd of five jumbos including two young calves entered the farmland rigged with the electrical fence. While the owner of the farm was sent to judicial custody and recommendations were to be made to the District Collector to invoke the Goondas Act against him, arrangements have been made to help the calves join a herd.

Such accidents are nothing new to Tamil Nadu. A few weeks ago, a jumbo died after being electrocuted by an illegal fence in Denkanikottai in Krishnagiri district, which is part of the Cauvery North Wildlife Sanctuary. The elephant’s remains had been secretly buried by the farmer until the Forest Department arrived at the scene, thanks to a tip-off. It’s a phenomenon witnessed across India, as over the past five years, we have lost as many as 494 elephants to train accidents, electrocution, poaching and poisoning. Last December, the Union Environment Ministry offered the Parliament statistics throwing light on the hurdles that undermine elephant conservation efforts in the country. As per the report pertaining to the period between 2017-18 to 2021-22, electrocution due to contact with power transmission lines accounted for a majority of elephant deaths — a staggering 348 cases. This was followed by train accidents that claimed 80 lives; poaching, which killed 41 jumbos; and poisoning, which caused 25 deaths. Here in Tamil Nadu, as many as 50 elephants have succumbed to train related accidents in the last five years.

While India has an estimated population of 30,000 elephants in the wild, even this fractional loss could have an adverse impact on herd dynamics while amplifying the danger of human-animal conflicts. Per conservation scientists, the death of a single older elephant or patriarch implies the loss of several years of experience for younger jumbos in the herd. The absence of senior elephants throws the youngsters off track, prompting many of them to wander into human-dominated regions.

Keeping these metrics in mind, the government of India has embarked on several initiatives to safeguard the elephant population. Several States and power transmission companies have been directed to ensure that transmission lines are erected at an adequate height from the ground so as to bring down the risk of electrocution. To protect them from train accidents, it was suggested that underpasses of adequate height were constructed so that elephants could safely cross railway lines.

And although the country is home to as many as 32 elephant reserves in 14 States, almost a third of the elephant population lives in contiguous forests while the rest are divided among regions that are shrinking by the day due to human activity like agriculture and infrastructure development. Experts have recommended the cultivation of non-palatable crops like citrus fruits, chillies, and ginger to create a buffer zone of sorts to protect food grains that are now under attack from jumbo herds. Drones fitted with thermal sensing cameras are also being deployed in States like Odisha to keep track of the elephant population.

Apart from incentivising agricultural workers to move away from buffer zones in reserve forest areas, the electricity department officials in such farming centric regions also need to conduct regular drives. This way, they can locate illegally tapped electric fences and remove them to avert further tragedies.