ENVIRONMENT: No Easy Way of Managing Elephant-Human Conflict

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Sep 25 2003 (IPS) - Experts across the world are divided over whether it is governments or conservators that must take the first step towards saving the elephant, but agree that there are no quick and easy ways of mediating in this conflict.

Ajay Desai, a specialist from India who has also worked in Sri Lanka, believes conservators have to play the lead role in suggesting guidelines for a policy that governments can then implement. ”Governments would guide us but the key role is played by conservators,” he said.

But others like Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the African elephant, say that governments should take lead. This provoked a British expert to point out that ”the extent of differences coming out of this meeting implies we would take a long time to find common ways of saving the elephant”.

A group of 200 experts from across the world met in Colombo for a symposium on human-elephant relationships and conflicts. The mix of speakers from Asia, Africa and Europe cited problems between the human and elephant populations on sharing increasingly shrinking resources land, water and food, very few solutions so far.

Issues discussed at the meeting included the sharing resources between humans and elephants as people encroach on elephant habitats, the effectiveness of electric fences used to confine elephants, ways of using ecotourism to help communities whose crops are destroyed by elephants and putting together a plethora of data on the elephant on a common website. Participants also suggested that socio-economists be included in the next gathering of experts to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the impact on the lifestyles and economic wellbeing of communities who live in or around elephant habitats.

The conference, organised by the U.S.-based International Elephant Foundation and Sri Lanka’s Biodiversity and Elephant Conservation Trust, was the first attempt to bring together human-elephant conflict specialists.

Joe Hefferman, who is from the Fauna and Flora International and now helping Cambodian authorities to protect the elephant, pleaded for suggestions toward a national policy. He said that apart from the threats from widespread poaching, land space was getting limited as Cambodia’s population is expected to rise from 11 million to 25 million in the next two decades.

There was reassuring news from Europe, where new laws are being drafted that set fresh standards for zoos in order to provide for better care for captive elephants and other animals. The new laws will force dozens of small, poorly maintained private zoos across Europe to close, said Dr Harald M Schwammer, a zoologist and vice director of the Vienna Zoo, one of the biggest in Europe.

He told IPS that a common law and guidelines set by the European Community would be used by member countries to initiate their own laws. ”These laws provide for zoos to be scientifically run, have organised breeding programmes and centres for research and education and a set of dos and don’ts,” he said.

”They must also have in-house zoologists and vets,” he said, adding that many of the small zoos would not be able to maintain these standards which require a lot of money. ”This is an important step toward conservation and caring,” he added.

According to unofficial figures there are some 35,000 to 50,000 wild elephants in Asia and another 16,000 to 17,000 living in captivity as domesticated animals. Estimates of the elephant population in Africa are set at around 600,000.

While the common view at the conference was that the human-elephant conflict was taking its toll on the elephant and its existence, Indian expert Desai urged urged conservators to consider the total picture. ”We should look at both sides,” he said.

Desai, advisor on a foreign-funded project in Sri Lanka in the mid 1990s of radio-collaring elephants to track their movements, said farmers near elephant habitats have many real problems. ”Imagine his plight when he comes home one day and finds his entire crop destroyed, house trampled to the ground and his only means of livelihood gone,” he said.

”Why do we have less tolerance toward his feelings? Who are we to tell people they don’t have a right to security? While we sit in the comfort of city homes watching television and pointing fingers, they (farmers) spend sleepless nights trying to protect their crops,” he said.

He explained this while pointing to a slide of a small hut on a tree where Sri Lankan farmers spend cold nights to try to prevent crops from being attacked by wild animals.

While wildlife needs to be conserved, Desai said, ”we should also not be blind to the rights of the people”.

Two Sri Lankan experts, Prithviraj Fernando and Ravi Corea, president of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society, suggested ways toward limiting conflicts between humans and elephants. These conflicts, they pointed out, happen mostly in Asia more than in Africa.

Because agriculture is the main industry in Sri Lanka and much of Asia and populations there are growing along with urbanisation, elephants in these areas can pose what locals consider a threat to their livelihood. ”Unlike city youth, rural youth are marginalised in terms of skills development and career prospects,” Corea said. ”We need to provide them with a hedge against crop losses give them an alternate source of income.”

He said ecotourism was one way Sri Lankan conservationists are using to try to manage the conflict between people and animals. ”We need to look at unconventional ways of saving the elephant. The elephant is part of our culture, traditions and lifestyles. Ask any villager threatened by elephants whether elephants should be killed and his answer would be ‘no’,” Corea said.

Fernando also suggested that resources within elephant habitants be enriched in terms of food and water, as a simple way of improving what is already there.

”If we provide enough food and water for an enlarged herd in a habitat that earlier accommodated less numbers, then I believe that’s one way of ensuring that elephants don’t go out in search of these resources,” he explained.

Douglas-Hamilton, founder of the Save the Elephants based in Nairobi and keynote speaker at the Colombo conference, said that religion and cultural practices in Asia could also help foster peaceful co-existence between people and elephants.

”I am fascinated by the place elephants have in religion in some Asian countries and the place of elephants in the Hindu and Buddhist cultures,” he said.

An average of 150 wild elephants die in Sri Lanka annually, many of them killed in human-elephant conflicts. However, the animal is a revered beast both in Sri Lanka and India and used in temple ceremonies and religious pageants.