Torches and tension on elephant corridors

South Bengal has been dealing with a human-wildlife problem for the past three decades. With densely populated habitations between forest patches, deaths and injuries to both people and animals are common. Shrabana Chatterjee visits Jhargram district after a troubling incident a couple of months ago

In the early hours of August 15, when Kolkata and the rest of West Bengal was seething in anger over the rape and murder of a doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, another conflict was raging in front of the Jhargram Raj College, in a town of the same name. Five elephants had entered Jhargram, which is surrounded by forests, in southern Bengal.

About 30 villagers, a special monitoring team engaged by the forest department and locally referred to as a ‘hula (torch) party’, tried to drive the animals away using sticks and flaming torches. Soon, thousands of people gathered to shout and jeer at the animals. The forest department was able to tranquillize one of the five pachyderms, but one got trapped opposite the college campus. Two men of the hula party allegedly threw their torches at the elephant, setting it on fire. The elephant ran frantically, writhing and shrieking in pain as flames engulfed its body.

Three elephants had found their way into the college campus, and amid the chaos, caused significant damage to the college boundary wall. Then they found their way out and stood by their injured friend’s side. The elephant collapsed and died. After several hours, when dusk descended, people left the spot, and the three elephants silently retracted to the forest. The postmortem of the deceased elephant on August 17 revealed that she was pregnant. An elderly man was also killed by the elephants during this turmoil.

These deaths brought back to the fore the three-decade-old human-elephant conflict in the south-western parts of West Bengal, often referred to as the Jangalmahal region. Here, West Bengal forest department officials say there are 200 elephants across 59,497 hectares of forest.

In 2023, another pregnant female elephant had died in conflict, as per official data. There have been 99 human deaths from elephant attacks in the State in 2024 alone. South Bengal accounts for half of these deaths.

Wildlife activists were livid at the brutality of the killing, and protested locally against the crude practices of hula parties. Hula is a handmade torch with an iron rod and live fire. Hula parties work in groups of 15-30 to manage and drive out elephants in the area. They are hired informally by the forest department.

After the videos of the attack on the elephant went viral, two members of the hula party were arrested on August 20. A public interest litigation has been filed before the Calcutta High Court, with the petition claiming that “not a single official and properly trained personnel was there who actually knew how to deal with such a situation”. This has been refuted by forest officials.

Jhargram, located around 174 kilometres south-west of Kolkata has, over the past few years, emerged as the hotspot of human-elephant conflict. The large-canopied trees make visibility as low as 5 metres in some places, so people don’t see a herd until it’s too late.

Movement patterns

Experts like Professor Raman Sukumar from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, say that a drought almost certainly played a role in the initial large-scale dispersal of elephants from Jharkhand to southern Bengal in 1986-87.

Umar Imam, the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Jhargram, describes elephants as “sharp, intelligent, and adaptive animals” that have “changing behaviour patterns”. However, he adds, “Once elephants start liking a place, it is hard to remove them from the area.”

The forest department and DFO are facing the heat of the protests and criticism. “The only reasonable way to combat the conflict is to reduce human-elephant interaction and make co-existence possible. We are trying to increase plantation, so the elephants have enough food inside the forests and do not venture out into the villages,” says Imam. He wants to try energised fencing in places, that will send out shocks when touched, to restrict herd movement. He admits that many officials do not agree with him and call it inhumane.

Sagnik Sengupta, the director of Sage Foundation that works on wildlife conservation and mitigating human-animal conflict, says that using electric fencing to restrict any Schedule I animal (the elephant is a part of this list) is illegal in India according to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. People that cause harm to animals under Schedule I may face imprisonment.

Sengupta says that hula parties are only meant to block the elephants from entering a town, and not to drive them out. He also points out that according to a 2018 order passed by the Supreme Court of India it is illegal to throw fire torches to drive out elephants. “The mashaals (torches) must be used only in an emergency to avoid any deaths and crop damage that may take place and ensure the proper movement of elephants in the corridors,” says the court order.

The activist says, “The hula parties work under the DFO and he cannot shrug off responsibility of the actions under his watch.” The DFO, however, claims that the flaming torches were hurled without his knowledge and did not happen in front of his eyes.

The process of tranquillization of the elephant has also been questioned by activists. When this is done to a Schedule I animal like the elephant, permission is needed from the principal chief conservator of forests and the wildlife and the chief wildlife warden as per the Wildlife Protection Act. The confirmation was only verbal on August 15 and the authorities later issued a de facto approval on August 16, according to an RTI reply shared by Sage Foundation.

Over the years there have been many reports of human-wildlife conflicts, including baby elephants dying after being separated from their mothers, the death of people, the destruction of crop, damage of houses, fatal injuries, and more.

Shyamsundar Mahato, 54, is a local activist who says that before the 1980s, elephants were rare in the area. Even when they came from the Dalma mountain range in Jharkhand, they went back and never stayed. He claims that the mining in the Dalma mountains has caused these elephants to leave their natural habitat and come to Jhargram.

Another reason behind the conflict is the elephant corridors that cross through human habitations. Data from the Government of India data from 2023 says, “The State of West Bengal had the highest number of elephant corridors, with 26 identified in both northern West Bengal (part of the north-eastern regional elephant population) and southern West Bengal (part of the east-central regional elephant population).” This makes the problem far deeper than simply controlling elephant movement.

Lives and livelihoods lost

Early in the morning when the sun is slowly climbing over the horizon and there is still a nip in the air, villagers from all around Jhargram head to the forests to collect firewood, twigs, leaves, or graze their cattle. The highway connecting Jhargram town to the rest of the State cuts through the forest. Many communities are permanent forest dwellers, living on both sides of the highway. They remain at high risk of elephant attacks.

It is a common practice in these areas to defecate in the open, mainly because a toilet is not available at home or the ones available are not attached to homes. Crossing paths with elephants early in the morning catches many off guard and leads to deaths or fatal injuries.

Imam says the highest risk window is between 4 and 6 a.m. when the maximum number of elephant attack deaths occur. The hula party is especially active at this time.

Jiten Khiladi looks at the jungles around him and sighs. His brother Chadu Khiladi, 54, was killed in an elephant attack three months ago. He recalls with a heavy heart, “My nephew had just opened a small snack shop near the highway, adjacent to the forest. One night they heard elephants had laid waste to the shop. They ran to save it. But the elephants had trampled over everything and killed my brother.” Jiten says he ran to the spot too but it was too late.

Since then, Chadu’s son has not been able to go back to the shop. The family is struggling to make ends meet. They got ₹5 lakh as compensation for the death, but no family member has been offered a job, something the State government had promised to all families of victims.

The conflict also leads to a loss of livelihood. Shyamsundar has lost huge amounts of cashew and mango crops to multiple elephant attacks over the years. He says that elephants have never eaten these crops before, but they are adapting due to the lack of other preferred food.

Thousands of villagers in the region have lost their crops to elephants. When a herd of about 25-40 elephants visit farmlands, they leave nothing behind, the villagers of the area say.

Early in the morning on a summer day when Kalyan Mahato, a 29-year-old farmer reached his farmland, he saw his crops destroyed. “It was like they had had a hearty breakfast,” says Kalyan, with a sarcastic laugh. He has come to accept the loss over the years, but crop destruction remains a constant worry for him and his fellow farmers.

Kalyan, who is also a panchayat samiti member in Salboni village, Jhargram district, says that they have now started to adapt to the elephant’s changing food patterns. They grow crops like bitter gourd and cucumber as those are not very popular among elephants.

People in the area have now come up with their own ways to protect themselves. They have over 15 WhatsApp groups where those from across the region send elephant sighting updates. Though this helps in tracking the elephants’ footprints, it also leads to misinformation. Many unverified videos and photographs are circulated that cause panic, leading to attacks on elephants.

Hula party members face flak

People in Jhargram say that hula party workers are putting themselves at risk with this job. Sanjib Mahato, 35, a former hula party member, says that when he worked in the field to drive out elephants, he got no formal training or safety gear. Sanjib has given up this risky task after two injuries to his legs, which forced him to stay in bed for months and stopped all income for the family.

The hula members are paid a meagre sum of ₹300 per person for each drive. Sanjib, who has now taken to driving an e-rickshaw after eight years of hula party work, claims, “The compensation for injury was ₹25,000, but I did not get any money. My entire team stopped work over two years ago due to the high risks, but more than ₹3.5 lakh of our payments are still stuck with the forest department.” Many workers have also suffered fatal snake bites.

Imam refutes the claims and says that no official complaints have been made regarding payments and that Sanjib was not a part of his team. He agrees though that a compensation of “₹15,000 per hectare of destroyed crop is not enough” and that money can go only so far. “We can never return any lives.”

Published - October 27, 2024 07:01 pm IST