The painful truth is that the first two deaths of Osama referred, not to the terrorist mastermind and leader of al-Qaeda, but to two separate individual Asian elephants Elephas maximus, Asia’s largest land mammal, with the contrasting reputation of being the gentle giants of its forests. These individuals were named after a feared human, on the most-wanted list of a distant superpower. They were labeled serial killers and raging bulls, as rogues and as terrorisers. And yet, when people came to see the prostrate corpse of the killed elephant, they placed flowers on its body, even as many asked whether the right animal was killed or it was just another innocent elephant victim.

Maligning the elephant

Now, as before, it is open season on the Asian elephant. The character of the elephant is on public display in the media, interpreted to us by all manner of people. There are journalists and filmmakers, naturalists and scientists, politicians and hunters, mahouts and zookeepers, temple priests and elephant ‘owners’. Everyone knows, or seems to know, the elephant.

From the forests come stories of great tuskers and makhnas and their roving lives of ranging and musth and disproportionate peril. There are tales of tenderness among mothers and calves, and of itinerant family herds led by rugged matriarchs over familiar routes across vast and varied landscapes. The stories speak of communication by unheard sounds, unfelt vibrations, and undetected pheromones, and of elephant memory and cognition. They speak of individuals that are self-aware and social, that can be doting or depressed, loving and forgiving. We learn of stable yet sensitive societies, and begin to know sentient and intelligent individuals. These stories proclaim an understanding of elephants that is barely beginning to grow.

From crop fields and human habitation come tales of rogues and raiders, marauders and mayhem. There is an image of a lone tusker, willful and vicious, or of a huge herd on a rampage of raiding and pillage. The elephant tramples, the tusker gores, snuffing the lives of the few people whose path has converged tragically with its own. The elephants are not on old routes anymore; they are said to be straying herds, individuals on trespass. The words say it all. Each elephant and its action, known or unknown, is judged and placed within the ambit of a common belief. Pinioned by belief and judgement, claims and media reports, the elephants, unaware, must await retaliation. Retaliation and pain at the hands of the self-aware, social, sentient, and intelligent human.

The pain of the elephant

What does it take to cause pain to an elephant? That great beast, ponderous and thick-skinned, that stands tall in its calloused feet, but is still dwarfed by the immensity of its worldly landscape and its perpetual perils.

Will it take a land mine, planted in a contested forest by warring people, which tears away its leg? Or the final body blow to an elephant on its path delivered by a speeding train that brooks no obstruction to its own? Will it be a flaming torch flung on its skin by an irate farmer, whose ire has overwhelmed his tolerance? Or perhaps the pain from the sting of an electric wire strung deliberately across land that someone now claims as his, and only his? It could come, too, from a bullet as it bursts its way into its heart or brain—from the gun of a poacher who wants only its teeth.

Any of this may bring pain, and yet, the deepest pain to an elephant may come from the loss of one of its own. A pain we barely sense, far less understand, as we watch the elephant visit and caress the bones of the dead.

We have arrived at a grim moment; one where we must, it is being said, rethink our tolerance and veneration towards the elephant, a relation that has spanned millennia. We must, it is being said, find ways to deal with the elephant, as one would deal with a troublesome pest, a pest spawned by an interaction between people and landscapes gone awry.

Something missing

And so, the ecologists, wildlife scientists, forest managers, judges, and administrators are coming up with their answers. Protect the reserves and the movement corridors, they say, and the elephants will find their way through ‘our’ land. Erect this kind of barrier, not that, and here, not there, this way, and not that, they say, and the elephants can be kept at bay. Compensate the people for their loss justly and quickly, they say, for everything today has a price and perhaps people’s love can be bought, too. Understand the elephant, they say, strapping a collar on its neck or probing its DNA and its habits, for this will inform us, and information is power. Capture and relocate the elephant, or kill (cull) it where it lives, say the pragmatists, for we can then evade the elephant as easily as we evade seeing the brutality that is in us. We can even mark our broken tolerance by filling elephant camps with broken elephants. By and large, these methods and answers have one character. They treat the elephant as an object, a commodity even, to be valued or traded, upon whom, in the words of G. A. Bradshaw, “things and people act to produce a programmed response”. As J. M. Coetzee writes, in The Lives of Animals:

The heart is the seat of a faculty, sympathy, that allows us to share at times the being of another.  Sympathy has everything to do with the subject and little to do with the object… There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.

Are we not missing something? Will it not help to bring in an element of empathy to elephant individuals, societies, and cultures? Should we not aspire to a higher understanding of the psychology of elephants whose selfhood, rights, and emotions should matter to us, but are relegated to the dustbin of false anthropomorphism or misguided pragmatism? Is this pragmatism and experience pointing us toward the right solutions, or have we wavered in our direction from a shallowness of our understanding? Manuals and action plans are written on how to understand and stave off conflict with the elephant-object in India. Why is there so little said about the elephant-being with whom we share so much of our true nature? As Bradshaw notes in the fascinating book Elephants on the edge: what animals teach us about humanity:

Elephants are merely mirroring the circumstances in which they have come to live… Under such conditions, human-elephant conflict (HEC) takes on a very different meaning. … issues surrounding elephants are “not about the animals”. Rather, they are about humans: human-elephant conflict revolves around questions of social justice and human introspection. Much like other cultures that have refused to be absorbed by colonialism, elephants are struggling to survive as an intact society, to retain their elephant-ness, and to resist becoming what modern humanity has tried to make of them—passive objects in zoos, circuses, and safari rides, romantic decorations dotting the landscape for eager eyes peering from Land Rovers, or data to tantalize our minds and stock the bank of knowledge. Elephants are, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote about black South Africans living under apartheid, simply asking to live in the land of their birth, where their dignity is acknowledged and respected.

One is forced to wonder what the future holds for the human – elephant relationship, a relationship between two intelligent, sentient species. Will it remain a perception of elephants as objects of conflict seen through the lens of science, when it could lead to coexistence if passed through the prism of humanity?

Splashes of red dot the evergreen canopy, like blood on green canvas. The canarium, stately white and tall, holds a red flush of new leaves above verdant, multi-hued forest.

Skimming spectacularly over the trees, a great hornbill brushes grandeur onto the canvas. In the company of hornbills, a new year dawns on an unsuspecting rainforest.

The red flush is the flag of an ancient rhythm: a rhythm of renewal, carrying the cadence of nature’s annual cycles. In the rainforest, the tree has endured months of sharp dry weather followed by lashing rains. It has stoically retained its space amidst a thousand species, its leaves buffeted by many winds, aloft in sun and in rain, for another year of its decades’ long existence. It has provided fruits for the hornbill, leaving seeds for hungry rodents or to germinate in a secure nook, and oozed resinous dammar from a cut. Drawing in the air with the breath of humanity, richer now in carbon dioxide, the tree has returned oxygen and thousands of litres of water to enrich the air and seed the clouds. As the second monsoon withdraws, leaving clear skies, spent clouds, and a winter chill, nature’s seamless cycle enters another human year. There is now a renewed challenge of life in the environment, with other lifeforms of the forest, and with people in the wider landscape.

From the perspective afforded by the forests where the canarium tree stands, here in the Anamalai hills, one can take a sidelong look at events of the recent past and prospects for the year ahead. Local, national, and global change all have their imprint in this microcosm within a planet impacted by human action like never before.

Bolstered by a legal framework centred on conserving tigers, the state governments of Kerala and Tamil Nadu firmed-up existing wildlife sanctuaries, declaring the Parambikulam and Anamalai Tiger Reserves. Stretches of remarkable forest with threatened and endemic wildlife gain renewed recognition and, hopefully, better protection and improved management. In addition, valuable Reserved Forests, languishing in deliberate or benign neglect, are in the forefront as thousands of hectares are included within buffer zones. At the larger landscape level, these areas greatly add to the conservation potential of existing reserves and help reduce the threat of forest fragmentation. Stung by past failures that aimed to exclude local people from conservation, efforts are being made to involve communities in the plantations and agricultural lands in the buffer zone. Overcoming suspicion and doubts to constructively engage these communities is essential to gain support for conservation and address pressing issues such as human-wildlife conflicts. This is no easy task, but efforts are underway, here, as elsewhere.

The people who share these forests of the canarium, the tribal communities of the Anamalais, are also at a crucial juncture. Respected for their forest skills, the kadar, in particular, have been partners in conservation of species such as hornbills and provided crucial support for wildlife research and forest protection. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) and the tiger conservation plan, both yet to be implemented, bring them promise and peril. Over the year, detractors of the FRA have learned how it has been invaluable in fighting conservation battles against mining and forest diversion, where other environmental laws have failed. Can government, civil society, and tribal communities work together to deliver on the promise, while averting the perils of relocation, forest conversion and degradation?

The hills here are named for the Asian elephant, a species that better represents present conservation challenges. Elephant conservation implies thinking about swathes of land larger than our fragmented reserves, of corridors and agriculture, of people and property. The year gone by saw a laudable initiative, the Elephant Task Force, of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), culminating in a thoughtful report that promises to gently but firmly transform our view of the elephant and ultimately its conservation. The elephant has become, deservedly, our National Heritage Animal. A wider cross-section of society, good scientific understanding, and more transparent management shall be involved in elephant conservation. Movement routes and habitat fragments, including on private lands, shall gain additional attention, bringing benefits to myriad other species in the landscape including threatened hornbills and macaques, endemic amphibians, reptiles, and native plants. We shall no more be owners of captive elephants, only responsible guardians. Awareness of the need to phase out the demeaning existence and abuse of elephants in captivity is dawning. Now the elephant obtains a renewed place in our culture and consciousness. A position that recognises and respects elephants as social, sentient, intelligent, and sensitive individuals and families, with whom we are privileged to share spaces.

Growing environmental consciousness is also driving changes in tea and coffee plantations in the landscape. Informed consumers are creating market demand for produce from farms that adopt responsible social and land-use practices. Consequently, certification programmes, such as Rainforest Alliance, require farms to protect natural ecosystems, revive native shade tree species, avoid toxic agrochemicals, and safeguard waterways. These promise to bring benefits both to the industry and environment.

Further downstream from where the canarium stands, the ill-advised Athirapilly project, opposed for years on many good environmental and social grounds, finally comes close to being scrapped. Partly, this stems from a welcome turn of events, with the Indian government finally appointing an environment minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, who seems keen to uphold the environmental laws of the land. In a short span, Mr Ramesh has transformed the rubber-stamp position of his Ministry to one that his detractors, even in more powerful ministries, are forced to take notice of. From aspects such as making the MoEF website one of the best government repositories of information, to taking clear executive decisions on dams, roads, airports, ports, forest diversion and exploitative industries, Mr Ramesh’s efforts have revitalised India’s conservation movement and the dignity of his ministry. His approach, mostly well-informed by ecology, is balanced by political pragmatism. The stance and strictures on preventing the proliferation of dams on the Ganga, on Bt Brinjal, Vedanta, POSCO, and coal mining, are battles that, if not won outright, are at least well fought. Like the stoic canarium tree, he has many troubles to weather yet, to hold his present position.

Forces even further afield also impinge on the canarium. Climate change is a decisive factor already affecting species, landscapes, and people’s lives. The year 2010, poised to be the hottest year on record, was also marked by more heat than light in the aftermath of international climate conferences at Copenhagen and Cancún. Responses such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), and voluntary, national, and international carbon markets are developing. Efforts are being made to recognise economic and other values of our natural capital and ecosystem services to move from an exploitative development trajectory riding on flawed and uni-dimensional measures such as GDP to sustainable development valuing social and environmental goals. One can argue that these are too little too late or that forests are better REDD than dead, but time will tell if these are adequate responses to humanity’s greatest global challenge.

Out in the Anamalai hills, as the flag of the canarium flutters red over the hill slopes, there is a sense of timelessness to the upheavals of life. And there are both storms and sunshine ahead.

An edited version of this article, titled Rhythms of Renewal, which appeared today in The Hindu Magazine is available here.

While coffee is grown by the relatively well-off, farmers in the plains rarely have the capital to invest into seeds and fertilisers each sowing season. They borrow from local moneylenders, who charge annual interest rates between 40 and 300 percent. Few farmers are able to repay these debts, which turn into crippling inheritances passing from father to son.

For decades, this was the saga of farming here. But since the 1990s, a massive but quiet economic revolution has unfolded, driven by trade in a rather unusual commodity.

Cattle dung. Nearly all the 30,000 farmers in these dry-lands keep cattle, mainly as draught animals and also for dung, traditionally an important input into farming. Farmers began selling this humble cow-dung because it fetched a far higher price than chemical fertilisers: for the price of one kilo of cow-dung you could buy 10 times its subsidised chemical equivalent.

But who was buying such expensive manure? It was coffee growers from the adjoining hills. They had had a major windfall in the early 1990s from soaring global coffee prices. The market leaders, Brazil and Colombia, suffered a series of frosts and droughts to which they lost half their produce. This seriously dented the global supply and pushed prices to heights never seen before. Smaller players like India made a killing, bringing massive profits to coffee growers in this region.

Flush with cash, they sought organic manure because it improved the yield and quality of coffee. And of course, conscientious and discerning consumers like you and I were willing to pay higher prices for coffee grown on organic inputs. Does this not sound like a fantastic example of consumer choice benefitting the last link in the value chain—the impoverished farmer of our story who supplied cow-dung to the coffee grower?

But, let’s not stop with the farmer. Let us take this story a step further. Lying just beyond the fields of these farmers is a large and spectacular tract of forest, stretching from Nagarahole and Wayanad, to Bandipur and Mudumalai. Together, these jungles hold nearly a fifth of the world’s remaining tigers and Asian elephants.

Is our demand for organic coffee driving elephants in southern India to the brink?

Which brings us to the twist. The cow-dung that goes into organic coffee, comes straight out of the cattle that graze—illegally—inside the last strongholds of the tiger and the elephant. Farmers have nowhere but these fragile forests to graze their cattle, which number in lakhs. And since the dung trade began, their populations have risen sharply. These cattle convert the forests, with ruthless efficiency, into first class manure. As they have marched in, the forests have retreated and the numbers of wild herbivores—deer, wild cattle and elephants—have declined.

Thus, in a strange juxtaposition only globalisation can bring, the frosts in faraway Brazil and, not to forget, conscientious consumers of organic coffee worldwide, have helped convert some of the best and last remaining elephant and tiger forests in the world first into cow-dung and then into coffee.

So, as you take your next sip of coffee, perhaps you want to check if it tastes… just a little bit strange.

- M D Madhusudan and Pavithra Sankaran

This article appeared in the Times of India dated 25 June 2010.

A farmer surveys his paddy field destroyed by elephants. Photo: Sanjay Gubbi

Shetty is not alone. Across India, lakhs of marginal farmers and pastoralists with small livestock holdings compensate for the lack of physical space for wildlife with vast spaces in their minds and hearts. For many of these people who live on the edges of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, the losses inflicted by wildlife make all the difference between food and starvation. Yet, many of them do not retaliate or kill these animals.

Not long ago, bears and wolves roamed the European countryside but systematic persecution by farmers and herders, unable or unwilling to bear the killing of their livestock, has ensured their extinction. Recently, when it was suggested that wolves might be reintroduced in parts of Spain, local people threatened to shoot the reintroduced animals. Some years ago, when a jogger in California unknowingly ventured too close to a mountain lion’s cubs, she was killed. After a huge public outcry, the people of California voted to have the animal shot.

In stark contrast, dozens of people lose their lives to elephants in Assam each year. Large numbers of lives are also lost to tigers, leopards and bears across the country. But it is to the credit of our rural populace that they have only demanded safety from these animals, rather than their elimination.

The immense tolerance and accommodation millions of people in India make for wildlife, extends a huge and hugely unacknowledged subsidy to conservation. But for their forbearance, it would be almost futile to attempt conservation in a densely packed country of a billion. But this tolerance is not without contradictions; the same farmer who may forgive an elephant for pushing him deeper into debt may also set a snare to catch deer or pigs for an occasional dinner. Persecution and tolerance may seem incompatible, but they do co-exist in the same cultures.

Tolerance must not be seen as a substitute—but certainly as a very strong supportive element—to conservation action. However, this support cannot continue while people’s burdens continually increase. Farmers and pastoralists across India are known to lose around 15% of their produce or livestock to wildlife each year. These losses are driving rural poverty and people’s patience is wearing thin. Since 2008, in Karnataka alone, over 50 elephants have been electrocuted by live wires laid by farmers desperate to protect their crops. Increased desperation always means reduced tolerance.

An elephant feeds on a paddy crop while a farmer watches. Photo: Sanjay Gubbi

The people who share space and resources with wildlife are among the poorest and most disempowered in our country. Conservation efforts today are focused almost entirely on securing wildlife habitats and policing forest boundaries, but they ignore the costs the mere presence of wildlife can place on human communities nearby. If we do nothing to reduce the burdens conservation places on them, or at least to share in their costs, we will only ensure that the cultural space they make for wildlife is lost. And that loss is bound to leave us immeasurably poorer, both ecologically and culturally.

- M D Madhusudan and Pavithra Sankaran

An edited version of this article appeared in the Times of India dated 28 May 2010.

An endangered lion-tailed macaque lies dead on the road in a rain forest fragment in the Western Ghats. (Photo: Kalyan Varma)

Crunch! Splat! Thud! A daily massacre is occurring under the wheels of our vehicles. Thousands of lives are snuffed out tragically, instantaneously, and yet, we hardly notice.

Around India, as in other parts of the world, millions of animals risk daily encounter with increasingly fast vehicles plying on an expanding meshwork of roads and highways. Roads through our countryside and forests and the people who drive vehicles on these routes cause the highest toll. This is a toll of actual lives—a headcount of animals crushed to death or else greviously injured and mutilated. Even leaving aside domestic dogs and cats, an indiscriminate diversity of wild species from butterflies, squirrels, lizards, and partridges to more threatened species such as leopard cats to tigers and lions, mouse deer to sambar and elephant, lorises to langurs and lion-tailed macaques, and sheildtail snakes to king cobras come to a sticky end.

The scale of the problem is imposing. India boasts of having the second largest road network in the world, second only to the United States. According to India’s National Economic Survey of 2007 ― 08, this is no less than 3.34 million kilometres [1]. Although only around half of this is surfaced and less than 2 percent of this comprises National Highways, the latter alone account for 40% of our total traffic. Like many things in India, the ‘total’ in that expression is a very large number indeed. In 2006, India already had around 86 million registered motor vehicles. A study [2] from IIM, Lucknow, records that the distance travelled in a year by a person in India (averaged across the entire population) soared from 285 km in 1950 — 51 to 3,470 km in 2000 — 01. At the time of writing, even this has nearly doubled. The study also estimates a staggering total motorized traffic volume of around 5,600 billion passenger-kilometres per year, currently. With an annual rate of increase hovering around 7 – 8%, this is poised to skyrocket to nearly 13,000 billion passenger kilometres by 2020.

With such traffic, it would be scarcely surprising if animal kill rates were high, too. Roads passing through forest and other natural areas such as grasslands and wetlands are of greater concern from a conservation point of view. The few studies that are available from Indian forests indicate a grave situation already. Studies have documented kills ranging from dragonflies and butterflies, to many larger mammals and birds including carnivores [3]. Around noon in Nagarahole – Bandipur in southern India, as 50 – 100 vehicles zip past every hour, a study patiently documented around 40 kills of insects such as butterflies and dragonflies for every 10 km every day, doubling over the weekends with increased traffic. A rough calculation indicates that vehicles here kill around 15,000 animals every year in just that 10 km of road [4]. In the Anamalai hills of southern India, a study of road kills of reptiles and amphibians found that around 6 were killed per 10 km of road every day during the monsoon [5]. Conservative extrapolation would suggest that a 100 km stretch of road through forests here witnesses an annual slaughter of around 10,000 amphibians and reptiles. Even this estimation is based on a study carried out 10 years ago when traffic volumes were much lower. Widening of roads and unregulated, ill-planned tourist influx has, if anything, made things worse.

Reptiles, such as this vine snake, and amphibians are among the worst hit in road kills. Photo: Kalyan Varma

Species struggle to survive

Such patterns of death on the highways are a common feature wherever roads traverse our forests, grasslands, and wetlands. Along the Western Ghats alone—a hill range much touted as a centre of amphibian and reptilian diversity with so many new species even now being discovered and described—hundreds of thousands are probably killed every year. These numbers should not make us proud that we have so many animals to subject to such wanton slaughter—that would merely be a dangerous assumption, a form of denial, or sheer ignorant optimism. Neither can we take heart from areas where few deaths are now seen along roads, until we can be certain that this is not due to populations having already been pushed over the brink.

Planners and managers neglect to take the problem seriously. Even when they are aware of the issue, they feel nothing needs to be done because they believe that while many are killed on roads, many others escape and the species can survive. What they fail to understand is that the additional mortality on roads can tilt the demographic scale against a population that already grapples with various natural factors and human-caused disturbances for survival. Studies from elsewhere have revealed that the negative effects of high traffic density can be as serious as direct loss of forest cover for amphibians and traffic needs to be avoided or maintained at low density for up to 2 km around breeding ponds if frog diversity is to be conserved in the landscape [6]. Another study estimates that even if 10% or more of the adults annually risk being killed by vehicles along roads near breeding areas, the population will eventually perish [7].

In most cases, all that the animal is trying to do is, like the proverbial chicken, to get to the other side. The road surface and corridor itself is of little use to most animals. Perhaps a dove or myna would find some fallen scraps of food worth eating, a lizard or snake may be attracted to bask on the hot surface, as to a rock on a sunny day. Dragonflies and mayflies may be attracted to the polarized light emanating from the asphalt, a form of light pollution that fools them into believing that they are over the surface of a water body [8]. As they fly around to feed or defend territories or even try to lay eggs on the water-road, they imperil their own survival. And then the road becomes an ecological death-trap [9], where the very adaptations evolved over millenia to enable these species to locate their food and thrive in their environment now nudge them to their death.

Even quick-footed species, such as this leopard cat, get killed with the increasingly faster traffic. Photo: Kalyan Varma

Deadly break in tree cover

The roadkill threat is not something only ground-dwelling face. The threat of roadkills is particularly acute for many tree-dwelling species that do not normally cross on the ground. With roads mercilessly slicing through our forests and government departments and road contractors recklessly widening roads and slashing all vegetation, including regenerating trees and saplings on either side, the tree cover breaks over the road. Besides loss of natural vegetation and native species typical to each area, this causes increased soil erosion and landslides. This leads to further expenditure in road maintenance—providing further opportunity for ecological damage. All of this adds to wastage of public money, while also wrecking the tree cover that would have allowed many species to safely cross the road overhead.

Unable to cross overhead using the overlapping branches of intact forest canopies, the animals now face a permanent problem—a serious, life-threatening challenge—of a gap caused by the break in tree cover over the road. That crossing, even if takes only a few seconds or minutes, can be an agonisingly long and threatening one for an animal trying to cross even a moderately busy road. In the absence of tree cover, arboreal animals are sometimes forced to use electric wires of powerlines to cross, leading to the double jeopardy of electrocution deaths for species such as lorises and lion-tailed macaques [10]. The roads and powerlines through our forests are increasingly turning into graveyards of tree-dwelling species such as monkeys, lorises, civets, squirrels, and tree shrews.

Animals may also be seriously stressed or change their behaviour in the vicinity of roads. Studies from Africa on elephants and chimpanzees, have shown how they tend to avoid roads and change their behaviour, due to the associated risks as one would expect from such highly intelligent species [11].

An elephant mother uses her body to shield her calf from an approaching vehicle as they cross the road. Photo: Kalyan Varma

Other factors may compound the road problem. The building of culverts, fencerails, barricades, chain-link and barbed-wire fences, and other concrete and metal structures along roads makes the crossing even more difficult. Parapet-like walls running without a break for hundreds of metres or kilometres along roads, especially on hill roads, become insurmountable obstacles for species such as porcupines, pangolins, turtles, young birds and mammals, to name just a few. On hill slopes disfigured by such roads, even large animals such as sambar and elephants have to negotiate the upper slope, cross the road, and try to somehow step or jump over roadside walls and culverts to step or land safely on the steep lower slope. Another compounding factor is the attraction of animals to road-killed carcasses, which may lead to further deaths from speeding vehicles until the carcass is safely disposed away from the road.

As roads become wider and busier, the number of animals crossing and the rate of roadkill usually increases, but beyond a point it may actually begin to decrease [12]. This usually happens when roads become four-laned highways or expressways catering to tens of thousands of vehicles every day. The reduction may be due to the decimation of wildlife populations along the road as well as a ‘barrier’ effect, where many animals actively avoid the road and avoid crossing it [13]. A road like this passing through a forest or key natural habitat essentially cleaves it into two pieces. For many species, this is an added fragmentation of an already fragmented habitat [14].

Impact of ecological changes

In addition, roads are now well known to cause various ecological changes, leading to a wide range of impacts including many, often unnoticed, detrimental effects on wildlife [15]. The disturbance associated with roads and the opening created by the road corridor does favour some species; unfortunately, these are mostly undesirable ones. Alien weeds spread along roads using them as highways to invade into ecosystems [16]. The exposure along the road dessicates and dries vegetation, making it more prone to fires. Trees are more exposed, too, and may fall due to high wind speeds along the road or suffer from stress related to altered ecology. All of these contribute to permanent and chronic changes in the environment and habitat, thereby affecting wildlife and ecosystem health.

Yet, this is only a small part of the story. No study has yet comprehensively addressed all animal taxa from invertebrates such as snails and ants to large creatures such as peafowl and elephants. Even the studies carried out so far may underestimate the true damage. Many animals are struck and badly wounded by vehicles along roads but manage to flee or drag themselves away from the road corridor to die unseen and unrecorded by researchers some distance away. It is not unusual for road-killed animals to be removed off the road or consumed by scavengers, including people, and thereby the kills go unrecorded. Even when dead animals on the road are noticed, other pervasive problems related to the road within forest areas are overlooked. This includes animals killed during road construction, earthwork and annual maintenance operations, particularly slow-moving and burrowing species such as turtles, snakes, and soil fauna.

Poor data on forest roads

No study has yet even catalogued the extent of roads through natural areas, especially forests, across India or the loss of forest cover due to roads. A notable exception, from Garo Hills in Meghalaya, showed that just in this region the 456 ha of biodiversity-rich forest was lost to roads between 1971 and 1991 [17]. Another long-term aspect is the issue of increased access: people moving in and settling or polluting otherwise remote areas.

While more studies on road ecology are required in India, there is also urgent need to use existing information and experiences from other countries to begin to reduce and avoid this carnage [18]. This requires the immediate attention and close coordination of ministries and departments related to roads and forests (or other natural ecosystems). Most important, it requires the attention of the citizen, the casual driver, the tourist—particularly the vehicle-based ‘eco-tourist’—whose individual initiative, sensitivity, and care could save thousands of animal lives.

A range of measures could help remedy the situation. Some are merely engineered quick-fixes that can help in certain locations or in the short-term, such as artificial ‘canopy bridges’ for movement of arboreal mammals [19]. Other measures include proper deployment of speed breakers in roads through forests, creation of underpasses and overpasses that are well-designed keeping in mind the ecology and behaviour of the species whose mortality rate is sought to be mitigated. Signboards informing people to look out for and allow wildlife to cross and measures to check overspeeding may also be implemented. Such short-term measures, if implemented based on research that has identified roadkill ‘hotspots’ can have very positive effects. For example, the installation of just four speed-bumps along 1.5 km of highway passing through a forest in Zanzibar, helped reduced the mortality of threatened red colobus monkeys by 85% in first nine months itself. Prior to this, every year, vehicles used to kill 15% of the colobus monkey population living near the road [20]. Slowing down vehicles at key locations is a very crucial aspect that reduces likelihood of road kill while providing greater reaction time for drivers and animals to evade a collision.

Longer-term and more sustained measures require a deeper understanding of the landscape through which roads pass and a greater sensitivity to the species we share this world with. The number, extent, and width of roads passing through forests and wetlands should be strictly regulated. Improvements to the quality of the road surface and adequate signages should be the emphasis for driver comfort and safety, not increasing the number of lanes or width of the road or the speed with which vehicles can traverse these crucial stretches. As there is virtually no understanding of these issues among planners, land managers, and the wider public, despairing conservationists today regard narrow, bad roads as a great boon, one that is surpassed only by the complete absence of roads.

Encourage vegetation growth

A key long-term measure is to encourage natural vegetation on either side of the road. Currently, vast amounts of public money is wasted in slashing all vegetation on either side of thousands of kilometres of road, with the spurious claim that this improves visibility or makes the road safer. In fact, dense weed growth rapidly chokes up the opened spaces on roadsides, replacing more pleasing and open, natural, native vegetation. In forest areas where tree cover would have naturally shaded out weed growth—performing a public service at no cost and with considerable aesthetic benefits—the opened spaces with obnoxious weed growth now represent a wasteful annual cost of repeated slashing in the guise of road maintenance. The lack of any understanding that good, stable, and safe roads really need consideration of ecological aspects as well, is one of the glaring failings of the government and road construction companies.

An example of a good forest road, used even by trucks and buses, with unbroken canopy over the road. Photo: NCF

The design and adoption of regulations is urgently needed. Forest roads should mandatorily retain and maintain tree canopy connectivity over the road. Where such connectivity has been lost, at a minimum, for every 200 metres of road, a 50-m-wide stretch needs to be marked off with signs and speed breakers and the tree canopy with overlapping branches re-established overhead. Efforts to establish and maintain such stretches should begin as a top priority along all roads through our wildlife sanctuaries, national parks, tiger reserves, reserved forests, and their buffer zones.

Guidelines need to be involved keeping specific species and landscape considerations in mind. For instance, in tropical forests of equatorial Africa, the home of the highly endangered great apes (gorillas and chimpanzees), the IUCN has prepared best-practice guidelines on a range of issues, including road planning [21]. This includes recommendations to plan roads at least 5 km away from protected area boundaries, reduce road width of primary roads to less than 7.5 m (less than 12.5 m including graded portion and shoulders) and width of secondary roads to less than 4.5 m (8.5 m including shoulders), avoiding road construction in closed-canopy forests, minimising the number of secondary roads, and re-using old roads rather than build new roads. There has been some effort to develop such guidelines in India [22], but there is much more to be done.

Forest areas around the world, including in India, are transected by a large number of old, unused, and unnecessary roads (e.g., old logging coupe roads, roads built during dam construction, or as ‘game’ roads for hunting). It is time to undo the damage wrought by these roads by actively removing these roads and ecologically restoring natural vegetation. Although the methods available for road removal may cause some short-term disturbance, research has clearly established the conservation benefits in the medium- and long-term [23].

An overarching need, although perhaps the most difficult one, is the sensitisation and involvement of individual drivers. A vast majority of drivers probably have no deliberate will to kill animals. They presumably have no wish to cause lasting harm to the environment or to the public exchequer by insisting on roads made and managed by ecologically illiterate and insensitive agencies. When individuals become aware and begin to care it can have two useful effects. As drivers, they can adopt more responsible driving practices, watch out for and respect animal crossings, and avoid other unsavoury practices such as feeding animals by roadsides. This, as a direct contribution, can help save hundreds to thousands of animal lives over an average driver’s lifetime. Second, by example, by persuasion, or ultimately by their vote in a ballot box, they can indirectly influence others to save thousands of lives, minimise ecological damage, help to improve roads, and make the driving experience along roads through natural areas infinitely more pleasant. When the paths of people and animals cross, each can then go their own way, leaving behind not a flattened carcass but the memory of a pleasant encounter.

Footnotes

[1] Economic Survey 2007-2008, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Link accessed 17 April 2009.

[2] Singh, S. K. (2008) CO2 emissions from passenger transport in India: 1950-51 to 2020-21. Proceedings of the Better Air Quality 2008 Workshop, Bangkok, Thailand. Link accessed 17 April 2009.

[3] Chhangani, A. K. (2004) Frequency of avian road-kills in Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, Rajasthan, India. Forktail 20: 110-111.

Kumara, H. N., Sharma, A. K., Kumar, M. A., and Singh, M. (2000) Roadkills of wild fauna in Indira Gandhi wildlife sanctuary, Western Ghats, India: implications for management. Biosphere Conservation 3: 41-47.

Sundar, K. S. G. (2004). Mortality of herpetofauna, birds and mammals due to vehicular traffic in Etawah district, Uttar Pradesh, India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 101: 392-398.

Radhakrishna,S. Goswami, A. B. and Sinha , A. (2006) Distribution and Conservation of Nycticebus bengalensis in Northeastern India. International Journal of Primatology 27: 971-982.

Areendran, G. and Pasha, M. K. S. (2000) Gaur Ecology Project, Report, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

Johnsingh, A. J. T., Sankar, K. and Mukherjee, S. (1997) Saving prime tiger habitat in Sariska Tiger Reserve. Cat News 27: 3-4.

[4] Rao, R. S. P. and Girish, M. K. S. (2007) Road kills: Assessing insect casualties using flagship taxon. Current Science 92: 830-837.

[5] Vijayakumar, S. P., Vasudevan, K. and Ishwar, N. M. (2001) Herpetofaunal mortality on roads in the Anamalai Hills, southern Western Ghats. Hamadryad 26: 265–272.

[6] Eigenbroda, F. Hecnarb, S. J., Fahrig , L. (2008) The relative effects of road traffic and forest cover on anuran populations. Biological Conservation 141: 35–46.

[7] Gibbs, J. P. and Shriver, W. G. (2005) Can road mortality limit populations of pool-breeding amphibians? Wetlands Ecology and Management 13: 281–289 .

[8] Horváth, G., Kriska, G., Malik, P. and Robertson , B. (2009) Polarized light pollution: a new kind of ecological photopollution. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7; doi:10.1890/080129.

[9] Robertson, B. A. and Hutto, R. L. (2006) A framework for understanding ecological traps and an evaluation of existing evidence. Ecology 87: 1075-1085.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_traps

[10] Radhakrishnan, S. and Singh, M. (2002) Conserving the Slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus lydekkerianus). Pages 227-231, National Seminar on Conservation of Eastern Ghats, March 24- 26, 2002, held at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh; personal observations.

[11] Hockings, K. J., Anderson, J. R., Matsuzawa, T. (2006). Road crossing in chimpanzees: A risky business. Current Biology 16: R668-670. Watch movie here.

Blake, S., Deem, S. L., Strindberg, S., Maisels, F., Momont, L. Isia, I., Douglas-Hamilton, I.,Karesh, W. B., Kock, M. D. (2008) Roadless wilderness area determines forest elephant movements in the Congo Basin. PLoS ONE 3(10): e3546. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003546

[12] Seiler, A. (2003) The toll of the automobile: wildlife and roads in Sweden. PhD thesis. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Link accessed 11 Feb 2009.

[13] Laurance, S. G. and Gomez, M. S. (2005) Clearing width and movements of understory rainforest birds. Biotropica 37: 149–152.

Laurance, S. G., Stouffer, P. C. and Laurance, W. F. (2004) Effects of road clearings on movement patterns of understory rainforest birds in Central Amazonia. Conservation Biology 18: 1099–1109.

Goosem, M. (2001) Effects of tropical rainforest roads on small mammals: inhibition of crossing movements. Wildlife Research 28: 351–364.

[14] Goosem, M. (2007) Fragmentation impacts caused by roads through rainforests. Current Science 93: 1587-1595.

See also this article by Rhett Butler on roads as enablers of rainforest destruction.

[15] Noss, R. The ecological effects of roads. Link accessed 17 April 2009;

Spellerberg , I. F. (1998) Ecological effects of roads and traffic: a literature review. Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 7: 317-333;

Forman, R. T. T. and Alexander, L. E. (1998) Roads and their major ecological effects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 29:207-231;

Trombulak, S. C. and Frissell, C. A. (2000) Review of ecological effects of roads on terrestrial and aquatic communities. Conservation Biology 14: 18-30;

Donaldson A. and Bennett A. (2004) Ecological effects of roads: implications for the internal fragmentation of Australian parks and reserves. Parks Victoria Technical Series No. 12. Parks Victoria, Melbourne.

Fahrig, L., and Rytwinski, T. (2009) Effects of roads on animal abundance: an empirical review and synthesis. Ecology and Society 14(1): 21.

[16] Gelbard, J. L. and Belnap, J. (2003) Roads as conduits for exotic plant invasions in a semiarid landscape. Conservation Biology 17: 420–432.

[17] Bera, S. K., Basumatary, S. K., Agarwal, A. and Ahmed, M. (2006) Conversion of forest land in Garo Hills, Meghalaya for construction of roads: a threat to the environment and biodiversity. Current Science 91: 281–284.

[18] Forman, R. T. T., Sperling, D., Bissonette, J., Clevenger, A., Cutshall, C., Dale, V., Fahrig, L., France, R., Goldman, C., Heanue, K., Jones, J., Swanson, F., Turrentine, T., Winter, T. (2002) Road Ecology: Science and Solutions. Island Press, Washington, D. C. Read review here.

http://www.wildlifeandroads.org

http://www.peopleandwildlife.org.uk/biblio.shtml#road

[19] Weston, N. (2002) Why did the ringtail cross the road? Using Rainforest Research, Cooperative ResearchCentre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Management, Australia.

Goosem, M., Izumi, Y. and Turton, S. (2001) Will underpasses below roads restore habitat connectivity for tropical rainforest fauna? Ecological Management and Restoration 2: 196–202. See also this article about faunal underpasses.

Laurance, W. F., Goosem, M. and Laurance, S. G. W. (in press) Impacts of roads and linear clearings on tropical forests. Trends in Ecology and Evolution in press.

[20] The Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkey: behavior, ecology, and conservation. DVD documentary, T. T. Struhsaker, Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University, USA.

[21] Morgan, D. and Sanz, C. (2007) Best practice guidelines for reducing the impact of commercial logging on great apes in Western Equatorial Africa. IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group (PSG), Gland, Switzerland. 32 pp.

[22] Rajvanshi, A., Mathur, V. B., Teleki, G. C., Mukherjee, S. K. (2001) Roads, sensitive habitats and wildlife: environmental guidelines for India and South Asia. Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

[23] Switalski, T. A., Bissonette, J. A., DeLuca, T. H., Luce, C. H. and Madej, M. A. (2004) Benefits and impacts of road removal. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2: 21-28.

The Anamalai landscape showing Vazhachal Forest Division and the adjoining Protected Areas (dark green)

Rainforests extend as far as the eye can see. The twin peaks of Karimala Gopuram (in Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary) are visible in the distance while the Lower Sholayar reservoir is seen in the foreground

I first visited Vazhachal in February 2008 with some of our Western Ghats research team comprising Raghunath and Drs. A.J.T. Johnsingh and M.D. Madhusudan. We approached from Chalakudy and reached the Forest Rest House near the Athirapally falls by late afternoon. The Chalakudy river negotiates big rocks at Athirapally and cascades down in three big plumes. This water then rushes down in a torrent just outside the rest house before continuing its journey through the Vazhachal forests. Even inside the rest house, the muffled roar of the water is always audible. We were surveying the Parambikulam – Vazhachal region to assess the status of the habitat for large mammals. The next day we intended to drive to Valparai but in the interim, we decided that it would be worth taking a short night drive to see if we could spot some wildlife. Soon after we left the falls, we ran into a herd of four elephants with a small calf. Startled by the sudden appearance of our headlights, the pachyderms were decidedly nervous, pondering whether to cross the road or bide their time, their jerky movements and staccato trumpeting reflecting their mood. Vinod, the Forest Guard who had been assigned to accompany us, muttered nervously as we crawled forward. Without warning, a lone motorcyclist came around a bend from the opposite direction and, unaware of the danger lurking a few feet away, passed within arm’s length of the herd. The elephants appeared taken aback which is probably why they did not react. As one of us used a flashgun, the elephants started in alarm, making Vinod mumble frenziedly, convinced of an imminent fatal charge. The matriarch moved towards us truculently while the others closed protectively around the calf. We were forced to reverse the vehicle around 300 m, where we switched off the headlights and watched in silence for a quarter of an hour as the herd crossed in the moonlight.

The Chalakudy river cascading past the Forest Rest House

Along this road to Vazhachal, there is hardly a spot where elephant signs are not visible. They are everywhere in the form of fresh and old dung, strips of bark ripped off tree trunks, broken and twisted reed culms and occasionally, the strong unmistakable smell of elephants close at hand albeit out of sight. On several occasions, I have been stopped by nervous bikers, inquiring about the presence of elephants on the road I had just passed through. Nilgiri langurs are also ubiquitous along this stretch of forest, the silence being frequently punctuated by their joyous whoomps. At any point along the route, if one waits a while in silence, there is a fair chance that one will spot a troop feeding or cavorting in the canopy. The Vazhachal forests are also rich in hornbills, with all four species of peninsular India, the Malabar grey, Indian grey, Malabar pied and great hornbills reportedly occurring. Other than the Indian grey hornbill, I have had quite a few sightings of each of the other three species in these forests. The resonating calls and booming wing beats of great hornbills are also frequently audible here. I remember one evening drive being particularly fruitful, when we saw seven Nilgiri langur troops and a solitary great hornbill before dusk and 13 sambar, a porcupine, two sloth bears and two leopards by the time we reached the rest house at around 8:00 PM. I have also seen the southern birdwing, India’s largest butterfly species, here.

Once when going to a tribal settlement located near this road, I came across a group of Kadar tribals accompanied by around 20 dogs of all sizes, colours and ages. This was obviously a hunting party. The tribesmen initially denied that they were out on a hunt but under friendly questioning aided by copious quantities of biscuits and peanut candy, finally admitted that they would catch small animals such as monitor lizards, hares and mouse deer if they chanced upon them. Without a doubt, such a large pack of dogs would have had no problem in bringing down even large-bodied species such as the sambar. Hunting is a major threat for wildlife in Kerala and has resulted in the “empty forest” syndrome in many parts of the state where habitat exists but wildlife populations have largely been decimated. Although the tribal population may be hunting in a more sustainable manner by meeting only their immediate consumption needs, it is a moot point as to whether the same can be said of the local settlers who have immigrated from other parts of Kerala and from neighbouring Tamil Nadu to take up residence in and around these forests.

Regrettably, the continued existence of this road in its present state has been jeopardized by a proposal for its widening and upgradation into a National Highway connecting Pollachi in Tamil Nadu with Chalakudy. It does not need much imagination to think of the disastrous consequences of increased traffic volumes and associated human activities on this pristine habitat and its fauna. However, the most serious threat to the existence of the Vazhachal forests is the Athirapally Hydroelectric Project, a 163 megawatt project that was proposed by the Kerala State Electricity Board in 1994. The Government of Kerala is proceeding with this proposal to build a dam five kilometres upstream of the Athirapally falls and 400 m upstream of the Vazhachal rapids at a cost of Rs. 675 crore. However, environmental groups have opposed the project on grounds that the dam will require the diversion of forest land, elephant corridors will be cut off, the picturesque Athirapally waterfalls may eventually fade into insignificance, people downstream of the dam may not get enough drinking water and the composition of the fish fauna of the Chalakudy river will be altered. The Athirapally area recently came into prominence with the discovery of Lagenandra nairii, a new species of fish. Besides, Gymnema khandalense, a rare medicinal plant earlier thought to be restricted to the Sahayadri region of the northern Western Ghats, reportedly occurs here. The Athirapally River Forum, supported by other NGOs, has filed a petition against the construction of this dam in the Kerala High Court. Over harvesting of reeds (Ochlandra sp.) to the tune of 200 metric tonnes annually, human encroachments of forest land, penstock pipelines disrupting connectivity for terrestrial mammals and high-tension powerlines disrupting canopy contiguity for arboreal mammals are some of the other threats to the forests of Vazhachal.

The magnificent Athirapally falls are in danger of drying up

Penstock pipelines deter the movements of terrestrial mammals

Much of the Vazhachal forests are due to be added as a buffer to the proposed Parambikulam Tiger Reserve. This is certainly a blessing since only its inclusion as a Critical Tiger Habitat will prevent the exploitation of these forests, a very important stretch for the movement of elephants and also among the best established breeding habitats for Malabar pied and great hornbills in the Western Ghats. However, much time has passed and the final notification of Parambikulam Tiger Reserve is still pending owing to ongoing boundary disputes and negotiations. In the interest of conservation, it is imperative that a decision be reached soon.

On a humorous note, I was once unable to procure a room in one of the rest houses in Vazhachal due to tourist bookings and was forced to spend a night in a Forest Department dormitory. Although the rest houses are well maintained, the same cannot be said of the dormitories which have fallen into a state of disrepair and resemble haunted buildings. Fortunately, I was accompanied by Sasi, my trusty field assistant, that night. We retired early after a simple dinner at a local stall. The rooms were stuffy, there was no electricity and the musty mattresses were riddled with gaping holes and crawling with bedbugs. We dragged a couple of the relatively better-looking mattresses onto the verandah, closed the collapsible gate in case an elephant or a leopard decided to pay a visit and dozed off. Sometime later, I was woken by a sensation of something nibbling at my toes. A flash of my torch revealed a large black rat. My yell of disgust awoke Sasi, who started shouting frantically from the other end of the verandah, certain that something was attacking me. We did not sleep thereafter, and spent the rest of the night swatting bedbugs and watching out for rats. At daybreak we hit the road again with alacrity, the invigorating air refreshing us within a few minutes.

Will these forests remain this way? For the future of the tiger and elephant in the southern Western Ghats, it is imperative that they do

A fifty-six year old farmer. You live in Maguvinahalli, a village on the northern edge of the famous Bandipur National Park.

Every year, at the end of summer, you till your meagre 4 acres, sow some jowar and some sunflowers. For weeks you work in the baking heat. Once the monsoons arrive, you continue working, in the pouring rains.

Once the seeds have sprouted and you have a crop, you don’t relax, no sir, you don’t. You build a thorn fence around the field. And a machan (platform) on the peepal tree in your field for you to sit up on, all night. Waiting and watching for the elephants.

Yes, the elephants. They come from the forest, to feast on your precious crop. Last year, your brother Murthy lost everything in a single night to a herd of 9 elephants. It happened at the very end of the season, a few days before the harvest. He still owes the moneylender 14,000 rupees.

So for several weeks you get no rest at all. Night after dark night you sit up on the machan, shaking your head and muttering to yourself to keep sleep away. They are eerily silent, these elephants. You have to be alert all the time.

You look out of the machan, moonlight outlines the distant hills. The silence is broken by the roar of a speeding vehicle on the highway. It used to be a small dusty strip when you were a boy. Now it is dangerous to cross with all the tourist traffic.

You have heard the tourists pay 3000 rupees for a day at the hotel at the edge of your village. You could buy seeds for a whole season with that! Why would they spend so much just to see some elephants? They could instead sit up in your machan, for free.

The gentle breeze lulls you into a dangerous calm. Your head tilts. You sleep.

Krrrshhk! You are suddenly wide-awake, but it is too late. You fumble for the match and light a firecracker. The wick forms an arc of light, then bursts. Your hand is shaking as you throw another. It is louder than the last. One of the elephants lets out a cry. You can feel the earth shake under you.

As quickly as they came, they are gone. But the silence is not comforting. You sit numbly, not wanting to move.

Dawn arrives and reveals the damage. In the ten minutes they spent in your field, the elephants have taken half your crop.

Lead settles in your stomach, you can’t even feel anger. Slowly, you tuck the matchbox and firecrackers into the folds of your dhoti. And walk home.

The dawn chorus of forest birds breaks the heavy silence.

We waited on the road, watching the traffic go by. Behind the building, we saw him move. He was a young tusker, with asymmetric tusks—his left tusk slightly curved forward while the right pointed straight down. With dignity and grace, and with all senses alert, he walked down towards the road.

The road was not a very busy one by the standards of any city, but for the little hill town of Valparai, here in the Anamalai hills of south India, it was arterial. The tusker was in a little plantation of Eucalyptus above the road. Below the road were the Iyerpadi tea estates, the Iyerpadi factory, houses of estate managers and workers, a swamp-stream, and beyond that a patch of rainforest close to the Anamalai Tiger Reserve.

Besides us, some of the estate people were watching the elephant. On the road, vehicles plied back and forth and some people went walking past, hardly fifty metres from the elephant. The elephant could see, or sense, all of us; with his trunk up, he monitored our scent and presence. Nervous, he let out a short blast of a trumpet. Yet, it did not seem that he trumpeted from anger; it seemed a brief  warning to get us off his path, and let him through.

While others watched, I moved closer to try and get a better look and a photograph. A little skid-trial came down the slope to the road and below the road a path led through the tea estate. The elephant seemed to be moving down that way. I stood right there, at that intersection, and sure enough he emerged, hardly thirty metres away.

He looked grand in the evening light. I was awed and clicked away to try and get a photograph that would fittingly record his grandeur.

And yet—I stood right in his path. He stopped, alert, and looked at me directly.

Divya and others who were watching from some distance urged me to move from there. And yet, I stood as if transfixed. Perhaps it was that wholly unnecessary photograph that kept me. Or, a falsely superior rationalisation:  “This is not the way he should go. There are houses and people down there. Maybe if I block this path, he would go around taking, what I think, is a better route.”

He gave me a few moments to reconsider my stupid, irrational decision. As I did not move, he did. Gently, he turned away, to swing down, taking a more inconvenient, steeper, rocky slope.

A group of women, coming to collect firewood, were casually walking towards the elephant, thinking it was one of the domestic elephants being used in tree-felling operations. We convinced them that it was a wild elephant and urged them not to go in that direction. On the steeper slope, the tusker turned back and swung down—towards the same route he would have more easily taken if I had not foolishly stood in his way. He kept moving, now forced to cross the highway a little further ahead of where he had intended.

We tried to halt the traffic on both sides for a few minutes to let him cross. It was scarcely necessary, he knew how to deal with traffic and crossed the road without a hitch and without disturbing anyone in vehicles or on foot.

He was heading in the general direction of the houses and the factory and anyone watching him, who did not understand the elephant in him, would perhaps have thought this spells trouble.

The tusker wanted no trouble, however, and just wanted to be on his way. And it was wonderful to watch how gracefully he moved, carefully avoiding the proximity of the houses. He needed to go that way, because beyond these houses and factory in Iyerpadi, was a rainforest fragment and the Tiger Reserve, and, perhaps, respite from others like us.

He quickened his step. He walked down. He swung away from the houses. He avoided a car that was coming up on an estate road (although he was close enough to it that the people in it may have got a scare). He turned down the valley, past the temple, into the swamp, and reached a path that would take him, without crossing any further road or colony, towards the forest patch.

A bunch of kids appeared from the vicinity of houses, all excited and trying to follow the elephant as he walked away. We dissuaded them—with a little persuasion, they stood to watch him from a safe distance. We had come to the colony to inform the people to watch out for this tusker on the move, but, again, it was scarcely necessary. The people had seen him and, moreover, the tusker had no interest in the houses. He really knew where he was going.

I will remember him as a gentleman of Iyerpadi and I will remember my foolishness of that evening. This is my apology to this gracious and peaceful elephant. I am sorry I stood in your path. I am sorry for thinking I knew better than you.

* * * * *
25 April 2009, Iyerpadi

Early last year, I chanced upon a news article with an accompanying video on the Reuters website. The piece going with the provocative title When elephants go berserk spoke of African elephants in Kenya. It spoke of elephants that “escape from a  national park”, “destroy crops” and so on. The piece provoked me to write a response to Reuters through their website, for which I received nothing in return except an electronic reply saying something to the effect of how busy everyone at Reuters was.  I have a bunch of thoughts on elephants, such conflict issues, and their portrayal in the media, all of which will have to wait for a later post. Right now, I thought I would put up this link and my response to Reuters to see what others think of this. Comments are welcome!

Take a look at the link here, first. And here’s what I wrote them:

This refers to a video on your website with the caption “When elephants go berserk” (http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=76199)

As a practicing wildlife scientist in India, where Asian elephants similarly enter crop fields or areas with people during their movements, I felt that the caption used in the news item was unnecessarily sensationalist and rather insensitive. The video really only shows elephants scared out of their wits and running in absolute trauma, with at least one individual narrowly escaping being trampled by another of its own herd.

When reporting theft or murder by humans, news agencies routinely use words like ‘allegedly’ or ‘apparently’; in fact, such cautious wording may be necessary to prevent libel suits. Why is no such caution used when describing what large and indeed, intelligent, animals do? Is it because the elephants can’t sue news agencies if they are labelled raiders, rogues or (wanton) killers, or if they are said to go “berserk”, cause “terror” etc.?

Our field research over many years, here in India, has indicated clearly that a large majority of cases of conflict between humans and elephants is due to accidental or incidental reasons, often as innocuous as a herd walking along its migratory route (trying hard to avoid people) which is now taken up by cultivation or development. Most cases called by the media as “rogue killing” or “manslaughter” should really be called “accidental deaths of people encountering elephants” usually in the dark or when in an inebriated state. What is called “raiding” is often better labeled “damage” or “incidental damage” and so on. In some cases, there is absolutely no damage caused and the media still plays up the issue.

I could go on… but I just wished to plead to whoever is reading this (and I hope someone in a senior-enough editorial position is) will take a more sensitive and accurate stance in using the right words to describe these issues. Asian and Africal elephants are endangered species—what the media write about them can help them enormously or hurt them further. Do you really want to be another agency that is beating an animal that is already down?

I would be happy to share our learnings/discuss this matter further because if an international news agency of such repute and importance as Reuters can be persuaded to review this aspect, then there is much hope.

Sincerely.—

***

While the media, as a group, vacillate between balanced and berserk, elephants, as a species, walk a tightrope for their survival.

A tusker treads the thin line between forest and cultivation.