Ramblings in the Darjeeling Terai: Elephants in my Backyard

 

This week, three of us visited the Prerna Educational Center in Salugara. The authorities were extremely troubled. On Sunday night, a couple of elephants had entered their grounds, breaking the gate and an adjacent wall. Having done that, they stayed for a long time as the students and staff cowered in the main building. After eating mangoes(!) and jackfruit from the trees in the garden behind the main building, they left as quietly as they had come.

Not unnaturally, the authorities were worried. They are in charge of many visually handicapped children. While all the children that we met seemed to be thrilled at their experience, the people in charge of their wellbeing understandably found it frightening that such a thing could occur. And this was not the first time, apparently. Such incursions have been common over the past three years. They had not faced such problems earlier this even though their institution was one of the first in the area when all around them was either grassland or patches of forest.

Now the question was what can be done?

The school is surrounded by boundary walls and it is barely a few hundred meters away from the Mahanada River to its north. Behind its well kept lawn and garden is a small patch of forest on a highland which arises steeply to about 100 feet or so. The elephants also come down this slope sometimes and enter the village, they said.

They wanted ideas for “permanent “solutions.

Now what constitutes a permanent solution? To those who face elephant intrusions, obviously they want that that the elephant stays away. But how does one ensure that? Past experience has shown that fences, so called “Elephant Proof Trenches” and many such devices work only fitfully. Just today, the Telegraph (see here) has reported that villagers form the Panbari Joint Forest Management Committee in Alipurduar have received an award from the West Bengal Government for erecting an electrified fence to keep the pachyderms away from their crops. It has been working well for 6 months now and all are very happy. From our experience I doubt that they will be as happy one or two years down the line. Sad experience has made it clear that these are only patchwork solutions.

The wall is broken as the elephants left for a forested patch 

If you look at the problem rationally, it is clear that elephants, in North Bengal at least, are now entering areas that they really did not enter earlier. Many of them are in small groups though larger herds are also present. I talked to some people who have some experience in tracking elephant habits and behaviour. An influential segment fells that the habit of chasing elephants from every locality they enter with the help of lights and sound crackers is counterproductive as they only go to the adjacent locality. When they are chased there, they go to the third locality and by them they are fighting mad and any unlucky human who falls in their path is likely to face consequences.

The gate and adjacent wall has been broken 

The solution then is to provide safe corridors for their travel between forested areas. This increasingly appears to be a pipedream as more and more encroachments occur in all Government land whether belonging to the Forest Department or to any others. An occasional hullabaloo notwithstanding, this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

The only advice left is to let them be. If you do not bother them, they will (hopefully) not bother you. They will inevitably destroy some property and crops, but you have to live with that. After all, the land has been encroached upon!! Perhaps a better compensation scheme may be useful to reconcile the people who are affected.

I am sure that there are very knowledgeable people who will disagree. Also, it is easy to talk about live and let live for me; after all I live on the 13^th floor of a high rise building. No elephant is likely to bother me in my homestead. I wonder what the solution is. Or will it all end by the elimination of the elephant from North Bengal?