The unfortunate death of a female elephant in Kerala in May 2020 has generated outrage over the past week. Much of the outrage was caused by the reason for the elephant’s death, as reported by certain media houses and social media handles. Celebrities, businessmen, and influencers posted messages in anguish. As is vogue in contemporary India’s factory system for “narratives” and fake news, attention came to be directed towards a certain district in Kerala where the incident was claimed to have happened, and a certain section of the population resident in the said district. A major offensive began in the social media, aimed at attacking the image of Kerala; here was a State short on humanity, devoid of the ethos of “Indian culture,” and filled with communists and Islamists. Truth and facts were the primary casualties.

The incident has been described by Kerala’a Department of Forests and Wildlife as follows. On May 23, 2020, a female elephant with injuries in the mouth was spotted by forest officers at a place called Ambalappara in the Mannarkkad forest division in Palakkad district. This elephant disappeared into the forests that day. On May 25, 2020, this elephant was spotted again at a place called Theyyamkundu outside the forest area. It was found standing in the Velliyar river. As is the usual practice, forest officers tried to drive the elephant back into the forest, but the animal refused to move. Veterinary doctors arrived and examined the case. They rejected tranquilisation as an option, given the health of the elephant, and suggested that two kumki elephants (trained captive Asian elephants used to rescue trapped or injured wild elephants) be brought in to pull the animal out of the river. However, before the kumki elephants arrived, the animal died. Post-mortem reports revealed that the elephant was two months pregnant.

Elephants crossing road, Karnataka. Photo by Sangram Parida.

Fake news

While the facts are as above, claims, narratives and opinions in the social media overtook them by a large distance. First, responsible Union Ministers and ruling party leaders displayed extreme irresponsibility and callousness in their response. Despite the fact that the incident took place in Palakkad district, it was claimed that it had taken place in Malappuram district. Prakash Javadekar, the Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, tweeted that the incident had happened in “Mallappuram district” (sic.) of Kerala, and that it was “not an Indian culture to feed firecrackers and kill.” BJP leader and MP Maneka Gandhi repeated the charge and said, “Malappuram is famous for such incidents;” “it’s India’s most violent district;”; and “they should arrest everybody in Malappuram who they suspect, because these are repeat offenders.”

One may wonder: Why this special interest in Malappuram? The reason is simple. The district has a Muslim-majority population. This demographic feature of Malappuram was used to link the “cruelty” against the elephant with a distinct suggestion of religious extremism. Malappuram has been the target of attack in the past by a number of Hindutva outfits for its population growth. This was despite the fact that the fertility rate among Muslim women in Malappuram is just 2.2, which is lower than the State-level average fertility rates in Haryana, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.

Secondly, the argument that the elephant was intentionally killed by feeding it a pineapple filled with crackers is still speculation. As per official reports I reviewed till  June 4, 2020, there is no evidence with the forest authorities to this effect. The nature of the elephant’s injury indicates that it may have been caused by an explosive, but there is no information on when, where, and how the accident took place. The matter is still being investigated. It may well be the case that the incident was an accident. A good guess is that the elephant may have consumed either a fruit or jaggery stuffed with crackers, which was meant as a bait for wild boars that attack the crop fields regularly.

In fact, what has been sorely missing in the reporting on the incident is a calm and dispassionate discussion on the real issue at hand: human-animal conflict. In the eagerness to fix blame, create communal divisions and score political points, a good opportunity to initiate a larger public discussion around human-animal conflict was lost.

The facts

In her statement to the ANI, Maneka Gandhi claimed that “over 600 elephants are killed in Kerala every year … that means, an elephant is killed every third day” (arithmetic as in source). An analysis of elephant mortality reveals that Gandhi is plainly wrong. Let us first look at data from the Department of Forests and Wildlife. Wild elephants die of natural causes (old age, disease, infighting, predation, accidents) and other causes (hunting, electrocution, vehicle-hits, explosives). The number of all “unnatural deaths” (as they are termed in official data) of wild elephants in the State is less than 10 a year (see Table 1). The only exception was 2015-16, when a single large poaching incident was uncovered near Malayattoor in Ernakulam district. Taking all five years together, 93 per cent of the wild elephant deaths were not because of unnatural causes.

Let us now consider a disaggregation of deaths because of unnatural causes (Table 2). Here again, 2015-16 is an exception. Among all deaths because of unnatural causes in 2016-17 and 2017-18, the number of deaths because of poaching and poisoning was very small (and zero in one year). Most deaths because of unnatural causes were because of electrocution or train accidents. Even when we consider all three years together, only about 5 per cent of elephant deaths were due to poaching. If we exclude 2015-16 as an unusual year, the share falls to less than 1 per cent.

Let us now consider a further disaggregation and a more recent time period, the calendar year 2019 (Table 3). The number of elephant deaths recorded was 119. Only one death was due to poaching. The single poaching incident in 2019 was reported in Kollam district, an incident similar to the one reported in Palakkad in May 2020. There were no poisoning cases. Of the eight electrocution deaths, six were accidental. There were seven deaths because of contagious diseases spread by domestic livestock, such as anthrax, foot and mouth disease and rinderpest. In 2019 as well, natural causes, accidents and accidental electrocution accounted for 95 per cent of elephant deaths.

In fact, from the point of view of animal welfare, what is more important in Kerala than poaching or poisoning is the extraordinary cruelty that captive elephants face. Most captive elephants are used for renting out to temple festivals across the State. These festivals are held in the hot months between January and April. The elephants are made to walk on roads for long distances and many days, paraded with caparisons at the festivals and denied adequate water, food and sleep. For these reasons, many elephants have turned violent during temple processions, and have killed many people. What is surprising is that there has been very little outrage about such exploitation of elephants in the name of temple festivals, even as the Malappuram syndrome pervades the media space.

The real issue

Human-animal conflict has been the bane of people living and farming in areas close to forests. Data are scarce. But a study by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) estimated that between 2007 and 2011, there were 888 human deaths, 7391 human injury cases and 14,144 livestock kill cases in India because of human-animal conflict. About 80,900 cases of crop destruction because of wild animals was also reported during this period.

More recent data indicate a rise in these conflicts and human deaths. In 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19, there were 516, 501 and 494 human deaths, respectively, because of elephants in India. Similarly, the number of human deaths caused by tigers were 62, 44 and 29, respectively, in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Elephants, thus, were responsible for a vast majority of human deaths because of human-animal conflict.

Kerala is a State with a long and mountainous forest line in the east, a long history of migration and settled cultivation in the hills, an early spread of plantation agriculture and high population density. The State’s forest cover was 11309.47 sq.km and covered about 29.1 per cent of its total geographical area. It is, thus, a State prone to frequent attacks of wild animals in the forest fringes. Human deaths because of tigers have not been reported after 2015, but about 20 to 30 people die every year in Kerala because of attacks by elephants. These are apart from the hundreds of cripplings and disabilities caused by animal attacks. Tigers, however, were the cause of many deaths of domesticated animals and birds like goats, cows and poultry.

Apart from human deaths, large extents of crop losses are reported in Kerala every year because of attacks of wild boar, porcupine, elephants, gaur, monkeys, wild pigs and deer. Maximum damages to crops are reported from the attacks of elephants and wild boars. About 45 species of plants are destroyed by wild animals in the State. They include paddy, coconut, arecanut, rubber, banana, plantains, tapioca, sweet potato, coffee, oil palm, pepper, cardamom, ginger, jackfruit, mulberry, mango and pineapple. Elephants are also responsible for considerable damages to physical property, such as cow sheds, irrigation structures and hutments.

Data with the Government of Kerala attest to the issues raised above. In 2016-17, the government received 7765 applications for compensation from wildlife attacks to agriculture, and the government paid out Rs 9.6 crore as compensation. In addition, about 361 applications regarding cattle deaths and 6461 applications regarding crop and property damage over 1900 hectares of land were received. About 62 per cent of the crop loss was caused by elephant attacks. About Rs 4.2 crore was paid out by the State government as compensation for crop destruction. These numbers have only been rising after 2016-17.

The large extent of losses incurred has indeed shaped the assertive and confrontational stances adopted by farmers against wild animals.

Traditional control measures

It is in this setting that we need to view the larger issue of human-animal conflict. For over a century, Kerala’s farmers and tribes settled near forest areas have set traps and adopted a range of defensive measures to protect their farms, crops and property. Right from those days, farmers have used a number of traditional measures to drive away wild animals. They hired workers to guard farms; installed scarecrows; dug trenches; constructed stone walls, bamboo fences, thorny bush fences or barbed wire fences; beat drums or made sounds with metals; lit fire; burst crackers or threw country bombs at night; used stray dogs; put up reed poles; placed bath soaps in coconut shell at night; sprayed kerosene oil in the raiding path of animals; or set baiting balls of jaggery, arecanut or wheat flour packed with poison or explosives. There were also official rewards announced for killing tigers and leopards.

These traditional methods, over time, became ineffective against the attacks of wild animals because of many reasons. Though partially successful in reducing wild animal attacks, they were largely transient in nature. Wild animals like elephants became habituated to these methods, and were not scared away by fire or loud sounds or other forms of disturbances.

Wild elephants. Photo by N. A. Naseer.

Modern approaches

The modern understandings around human-animal conflict are more scientific, comprehensive and multi-dimensional compared to the traditional methods. The new approach identifies multiple causes for rising human-animal conflict.[1]

A starting point in the new approaches is that it may never be possible to completely control or eliminate human-animal conflict. Such conflict has been taking place for centuries, and will continue into the future as well. Another important argument in the new approach is that it may be inappropriate to call it a “conflict”, as it needlessly counterposes the yearning for habitat of humans and wild animals. Hence, it is argued that future approaches should attempt at harmonising the ecological systems in and near forests to reduce the human, animal and economic losses that result from such encounters.

First, it is recognised that habitat fragmentation and natural resource depletion are major reasons behind the rising human-animal conflict. Over years, forest areas have been depleted because of increase in population, urbanisation, industrialisation and large projects. As a result, animals like tigers and elephants with a home range of about 100 sq. km, and that move long distances frequently, find their corridors obstructed and habitats fragmented. This leads to frequent visits by these animals into human habitations or cropped areas. Further, some studies show that the availability of water, fodder and forage inside the forests have dwindled, particularly in the summer months. This forces animals to roam around longer distances in search of food and water.

Secondly, because of various legislations and conservation projects, the number of wild animals have increased in recent years. More important than population is the measure of density (number per sq. km), which has also risen in the case of tigers, elephants, pigs and wild boars. In Kerala, which receives longer monsoons and has wetter forests than neighbouring States, wild animals also move in in large numbers between January and May. Yet, this rising population has to survive in the same extent of home range. In regions where the carrying capacity of the home range is exhausted, instances of wild animal invasions into habitations rise in frequency and intensity.

Thirdly, new understandings of wildlife behaviour show that most large mammals involved in human-animal conflict are polygamous and show strong sexual dimorphism. In elephants, the male animals have a larger body size and also have secondary sexual signs like horns and tusks. There is also a strong selection for these characteristics among male elephants, as they enhance the ability of males to prevail over other males for females. This behavioural trait also brings the male elephant in close contact and conflict with people. Early studies in India have shown that compared to an adult female elephant, an adult male elephant (or gangs of male elephants) entered a cultivated area six times more frequently, and consumed twice the quantity of crops. Together, it turns out that an adult male elephant caused considerably higher economic loss than by an adult female elephant. Similar results are reported for man-eating tigers in the Sunderbans also.

Fourthly, research into optimal feeding habits of wild animals show that they feed in a manner that maximises the intake of energy, proteins and minerals, while minimising the time of consumption and effort in preying. This is one reason why tigers prefer domesticated cows more than wild animals. Similarly, a raid of cultivated grasses like paddy fetches the elephant more protein, calcium, and sodium than wild grasses in the forest. Cultivated grasses are also more palatable than wild grasses. In other words, frequent crop raids by elephants just show a better foraging strategy shaped by evolution.

It is only through appreciating the importance of concerns, as the ones expressed above, that we can think of comprehensive strategies to tackle human-animal conflict. As a result, a combination of multiple strategies have come to be used by governments and farmers in the more recent years. They bring together new understandings of wildlife behaviour and the use of new technologies.

Self-defense measures

To begin with, traditional methods like poison baits, explosive baits, beating drums, lighting night fires and employing night guards are still used in many regions with varying successes. However, these are extremely labour- and time-intensive for farmers. They also expose farmers to direct confrontations with wild animals. Hence, new types of physical barriers are used, such as electric fences, solar power fences, elephant-proof walls, trenches and early warning systems with either the radio-collaring of problematic elephants or hidden cameras. Concrete structures and rail fences are also used in fencing. Of course, some of these permanent barriers are expensive, and also need to be designed carefully to avoid damages to the ecosystems and fragmentation of habitats.

In many regions, new types of acoustic deterrents are used for self-defense, such as cattle recordings, alarms, bells and electric sirens. Drones are also used to scare animals away. Finally, biological barriers are also used, such as beehives and chilli smokes. A better understanding of animal tastes has led us to use vegetative barriers; the cultivation of a range of unpalatable crops act as a buffer between the forests and crop land. Thorny bushes and repellents like capsicum are also used as biological barriers.

Forest management

Self-defense measures are integrated with better management of forests. In recent years, forest departments have focused more on increasing the availability of water and food inside the forests. For example, ponds are dug in the forests to help store water, particularly in summer seasons. Elephant corridors are identified and people are voluntarily relocated from nearby areas. In highly sensitive wildlife areas, vehicular traffic is banned or regulated. In extreme cases, translocation of problematic animals is adopted. Here, as research suggests, the focus is on translocating the leading male elephants in the raiding gangs.

Community participation

Most importantly, community participation of the local population is expanded and deepened. Rapid response teams are formed by bringing together local youth, farmers and forest officials. New forms of benefit-sharing in initiatives like eco-tourism, including the creation of a community fund, help boost the confidence in local communities. Better compensation is assured for farmers who suffer crop losses. Of course, compensations address the effects and not causes. Yet, they are important in efforts to involve communities in the management efforts. Innovative insurance measures, designed to minimise moral hazard, are also introduced.

Land use policy

It is argued that the long-term success of efforts to reduce human-animal conflict is crucially dependent on changing the land use patterns near the forest areas. Globally, the literature identifies four forms of such change:

• reducing the conflict interface: here, efforts aim at reducing human encroachment into forest ranges, relocating agricultural activities out of forest ranges and consolidating human settlements near the forest ranges;
• facilitating defense against problem elephants: here, the effort is to reduce the size of crop fields, changing the location of crop fields to near the dwellings and changing the cropping pattern (including changing crops, intercropping and staggering the time of harvests of crops);
• reducing the dependence on agriculture in the regions near the forests: this includes measures to increase the efficiency of agricultural production and some measures listed above;
• modifying movements of problem elephants: here, we try to create and secure elephant corridors and routes, ensure access to water and food for elephants, shift settlement boundaries accordingly and designate new protected areas where necessary.

In sum, it is a multi-disciplinary combination of all the above measures that must constitute the modern approach to human-animal conflict. At the governmental level, it is also a multi-departmental concern as well. Notably, each location would require a customised solution, and no blanket solution will be applicable for any large region. Flexibility has to be ensured at the local level. It should also be remembered that the behaviours of both humans and animals change with the adoption of preventive measures. Hence, in the long-run, we also need a constant reinvention of methods, improved understandings of wildlife ecology and animal behaviour and more democratic participation of local communities.

All such policies will also require more expenditures on the part of governments. That will be a major challenge. Researchers estimate that one km of an elephant proof wall may cost close to Rs 1.5 crore. Similarly, the cost for a solar electric fence would be about Rs 1.3 lakhs per km, and an elephant-proof trench would be about Rs 8 lakhs per km. Hence, the choice of an appropriate technology suited for each region is necessary. It will not be desirable to choose elephant proof walls everywhere; they are too expensive and will create barriers to the movements of cattle to graze and people into the forests. Once the appropriate method is chosen, the central government must bear or share these costs at the national level. A national scheme to tackle human-animal conflict, with freedoms extended to States to decide on the specific strategies, must be initiated with required funding. The insurance scheme may be either integrated with this scheme or separately introduced as a component of the Prime Minister’s Fasal Bima Yojana.

One hopes that once the dust settles on the divisive frenzy around the death of the elephant in Palakkad, attention will move towards the real issue of human-animal conflict. It requires careful study, deeper policy engagement and more resources.

[1] I have benefited from discussions with current and former forest officials with the Government of Kerala, particularly Anil Bharadwaj and Pramod G. Krishnan.

R. Ramakumar is a Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Member of the Kerala State Planning Board.