A Cry For Help From The Wild

Asian Elephants

Threats

The continually growing human population of tropical Asia has encroached upon the elephant's dense but dwindling forest habitat. About 20 percent of the world's human population lives in or near the present range of the Asian elephant. Fierce competition for living space has resulted in human suffering, a dramatic loss of forest cover, and reduced Asian elephant numbers to around 25,600 to 32,750 animals in the wild.
Asian elephant populations are highly fragmented, with fewer than 10 populations comprising more than 1,000 individuals in a contiguous area, greatly decreasing their chances for survival.
Most of the National Parks and reserves where elephants occur are too small to accommodate viable elephant populations. The conversion of forested areas to agricultural use also leads to serious elephant-human conflicts. In India, up to 300 people are killed by elephants each year.

Habitat loss and conflict with humans

Male Asian elephant in natural environment. Rajaji National Park, North India
© A. Christy WILLIAMS / WWF-Canon

As human populations grow and people settle in areas that were once the sole domain of elephants, human-elephant conflicts become increasingly common. Elephants need a lot of space and a lot of food. As forest cover becomes fragmented, elephants destroy plantations and fields in their quest for food. They uproot and scatter other plants, trees, and groundcover as they forage. This puts them in direct conflict with farmers settling into elephant habitat. A single elephant can devastate a small farmer’s crop holding in one feeding raid. This makes elephants the target of retaliatory killings, especially when people are injured or killed.

Genetic threat

There has been concern about the genetic effects of reduced numbers of male big tuskers. The danger arises when they are eliminated, and poachers find it worthwhile to kill immature males for their small tusks. When tuskers are killed, the number of males in a population decreases, resulting in skewed sex ratios. This may lead to inbreeding and eventually to high juvenile mortality and overall low breeding success. Removing large tuskers also reduces the probability that these longer-living lone males will mate and exchange genes with females of different sub-populations. Habitat loss also creates the danger that elephants are becoming confined to habitat ‘islands’ as isolated populations that cannot follow ancient migratory routes or mix with other herds, and as a result could become inbred.

Capture of wild elephants

The capture of wild elephants for domestic use has become a threat to some wild populations where numbers have been seriously reduced. India, Vietnam, and Myanmar have banned capture in order to conserve their wild herds, but in Myanmar elephants are still caught each year for the timber and tourist industries or illegal wildlife trade.
Unfortunately, crude capture methods have led to a high mortality level. Efforts are being made not only to improve safety but also to encourage captive breeding rather than taking from the wild. With nearly 30 percent of the remaining Asian elephants in captivity, attention needs to be paid to improved care and targeted breeding programs.

Illegal wildlife trade

Even where suitable habitat exists, poaching remains a threat to elephants in many areas. In 1989, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned the international trade in ivory. However, there are still some thriving but unregulated domestic ivory markets in a number of countries which fuel an illegal international trade. Although most of this ivory comes from poaching of African elephants, Asian elephants are also illegally hunted for their ivory, as well as for their skin. In some countries, political unrest is disrupting anti-poaching activities.

Tuskers in trouble - man and elephant battle for survival (India)

Tuskers in trouble - man and elephant battle for survival (India)

London Telegraph

April 1, 2010

Viscous blood coloured the tender shoots, the stain on the soil like a map. A thin banana farmer stood on a bank of the fast-flowing Kalindi.

'I didn’t want to kill it,’ Chami said in the lurching staccato of Malayalam. 'But what can I do?’ He raised his eyebrows, bony fingers wringing a torn lunghi. 'Three times this elephant destroyed my crop.’ He had tapped a power cable to electrocute the elephant as it returned for a fourth session. Currently out on bail, if found guilty Chami faces a minimum of three years in jail.

In a teak forest less than a mile from Chami’s plot, Mark Shand bent over a chart spread on the bonnet of a shiny jeep. A passionate English buccaneer, Shand, the brother of the Duchess of Cornwall, was planning the next stage of his campaign to preserve a vital elephant migration route. Like Chami (both men are 58), Shand has a long history with elephants.

'The Asian elephant is at an all time-low,’ he boomed, swinging an arm as if it might be a trunk. 'I predict extinction if we don’t do something to secure its shrinking habitat. Can we really allow this magnificent beast to vanish on our watch?’

This is not a story of good against evil. It is more complex. It is about poor people and an endangered species, each fighting for survival in a shrinking environment.

India’s 29,000 elephants compete with 1.2 billion people. First agriculture shrank the forests, then a shifting zeitgeist compelled Congress to ban both hunting and the capture of wild elephants: a double whammy that resulted in more animals and less space.

Elephants deprived of traditional feeding grounds took to crop invasion, hungry farmers retaliated. Elephants kill 200-300 Indians a year. Up in the West Garo hills of Meghalaya I once saw rioting villagers brandishing flaming torches on the streets after elephants had trampled four children to death.

Shand became involved in the late 1980s. On a whim, he bought an emaciated captive elephant, christened her Tara and rode her 750 miles from Konarak on the Bay of Bengal to the Sonepur Mela, the ancient elephant trading fair on the Ganges at Patna. Travels with My Elephant, the best-selling book that emerged from the trip, recounts an unlikely love story.

'My mouth went dry,’ Shand wrote of the moment he first saw Tara. 'I knew then that I had to have her.’ It would make a wonderful film. Producers have come knocking, but Shand is determined to keep control. He and his business partner, Robert Laycock, are in dialogue with Bollywood funders and have a 'fantastic’ finished script by Sooni Taraporevala, who has written for Mira Nair.

An ex-playboy of the Imran Khan set, Shand’s former lovers include Marie Helvin, who wrote that he was in possession of 'the most beautiful body I’d ever seen’. The pecs are a bit saggy these days, but he still has it. Shand was formerly married to Clio Goldsmith, the late Sir James Goldsmith’s niece; they have a teenage daughter, Ayesha. Although he is based in London he travels widely on filmmaking assignments, and fits in as many visits as possible to Tara at her retirement home, Kipling Camp, on the edge of the Kanha Tiger Reserve in central India.

For his next book, Queen of the Elephants, he qualified as a mahout, or elephant-handler, learning the language evolved from Sanskrit and mounting his charge via the trunk. In Travels he had noted that 'The Indian elephant was running out of living space.’ By Queen four years later he was witnessing open warfare.

'It was the first time I had seen these majestic animals reduced to cumbersome thieves,’ he wrote. 'Stripped of their forest and dignity, they ran like rabbits in headlights.’

Horrified at what he had seen, Shand returned to London and founded the charity Elephant Family. 'Actually it wasn’t me who founded it,’ he said. 'It was Tara.’ Hokey anthropomorphism may be cloying, but you can’t blame Shand for using every fundraising weapon in his arsenal.

'Look,’ he said on the first leg of our Indian field trip, 'Elephant Family is the only British charity dedicated solely to the Asian elephant. There are only 50,000 of them, compared with half a million African ones. Yet bigger, uglier African elephants grab all the attention.’

Shand realised that the erosion of migration routes lay at the heart of the problem. Elephants eat so much that they have to keep moving – they are social nomads. Herds have followed the same routes for centuries. If their passage is blocked, they seek food elsewhere – among crops. Preserving the corridors between habitats has become crucial for both sides in the battle for land in India.

The south-western state of Kerala on the Malabar Coast is defined by the Western Ghats, the sinuous mountain range that for centuries protected Kerala from mainland invaders. Top of many human development indices – life expectancy, reduction of rural poverty – and with low rates of infant mortality, the state also boasts the highest literacy rate in India (91 per cent).

Shand and I were headed for the Wayanad highlands in the far north-east of Kerala, a landscape of rosewood groves, rice paddies and misty peaks. Although the region is patchworked with rubber and tea plantations, swaths of deciduous secondary forest remain intact and, as a result, Wayanad hosts the largest single elephant population in Asia.

In the heart of Wayanad, the fertile Thirunelli district is known for cardamom, cashews and multitudinous banana species (Malayalam has as many words for banana as Inuktitut has for ice). The land is pocketed with modest farm holdings and roadside stalls pedalling jaggery (sugar) to pilgrims on their way to the Vishnu temple on the Thirunelli escarpment.

This is the world conjured by RK Narayan, India’s greatest English-language novelist. Often, while I was travelling through those remote settlements, I glimpsed a character from Narayan’s Malgudi: a woman harvesting jackfruit or a youth shinnying up a 100ft trunk to harvest betel nuts with a kukri knife bandaged to a pole.

But Thirunelli, with its dense bamboo groves, is a hot spot of elephant-human conflict, especially around the crucial migration corridor linking the Nilgiri Hills to the south with the much smaller Brahmagiri Hills to the north.

After a serpentine five-hour drive from the coast along a vertiginous slope, we arrived at Thirunelli. There Shand and I met up with Vivek Menon, the founder of the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). The two men met in India through mutual conservation interests more than a decade back, and Menon is now in charge of implementing Shand’s elephant initiatives in India. Menon had just flown down from Delhi to join WTI field officers working on a long-term project to protect a migration corridor.

As we drove into the jungle, sharp rays filtered through the bamboo hatchings, dappling stands of turmeric. A troop of langur monkeys swung between yellow laburnum blooms, and a mongoose darted behind a termite mound.

'The migration route through here is one of the most imperilled in the country,’ Menon said.

A tall, mustachioed figure, Menon is the son of the engineer who designed the fabled Ambassador car, long a fixture of urban India. ('As a child I rode in one of the prototypes,’ Menon recalled as we bumped through the jungle. 'I said to Dad, “Everything in this car makes a noise except the horn.”?’)

Having trained as an ornithologist, Menon junior worked his way up the hierarchy of the Indian World Wildlife Fund before leaving to found WTI from his spare bedroom. Eleven years later, the organisation employs 150 staff and has more conservation projects on the go than any other NGO in India.

But foreign funding accounts for 80 per cent of revenues, and, as Menon admitted, 'It’s still a hard sell. When people think of India they don’t think of wildlife. They think of swami and the Himalaya.

'The elephant has a totally different cultural role here,’ Menon went on, 'which is partly why we’ve never gone down the culling route like South Africa. In India you don’t sell your mother, your wife or your elephant.’

Reserves, the Elastoplast conservation solution for large, endangered mammals, have a mixed record, and anyway compete for priority: newly discovered coal deposits in Chhattisgarh are currently threatening a planned sanctuary to check rising human-elephant conflict in that region.

Population growth, industrial development, poverty, political incompetence, corruption – everything is stacked against the Asian elephant. Small wonder that hardly a day goes by without a gory story appearing in the papers somewhere in India reporting on hungry, marauding tuskers killing people in their desperate search for food. Small wonder too that farmers such as Chami take the law into their own hands.

The author of half a dozen influential books on the politics of conservation, in the 1990s Menon focused on poaching, going undercover in Japan and China for two years to expose illegal ivory trading. 'Legislation has reduced poaching. So now we are concentrating on conflict-killing, and trying to reduce it by creating a safe space for both elephants and people,’ he said.

Menon suddenly asked the driver to cut the engine. He had spotted pug marks. 'Young male,’ he whispered. The silence of the forest was broken only by the sound of an elephant trunk cracking bamboo. Then we heard the low trumpeting of a ship leaving port, and a tusker crashed through the rosewood, ears flapping with regal indifference. Its horny bulk blocked the sun.

'Mock charge,’ muttered Menon calmly. We watched. A blue-winged Malabar parakeet streaked across the glade in an iridescent flash. After a few minutes, the elephant backed into a glade of lilies, executed a slow three-point turn, and vanished back into the forest.

Elephant Family is working in partnership with WTI to secure the 42-mile Thirunelli-Kudrakote corridor, a vital funnel route for elephants, only half a mile wide at its narrowest point.

'The preservation of an elephant corridor is complex in scope, size and scale,’ Menon said. 'First you have to get the state to declare the land an official corridor, then establish a field office and put men in to get to know the communities, find out what they want. Third, you have to relocate some of the people living within the corridor.’

Relocating is notoriously difficult, painstaking and expensive; but it is possible. Although a family or group of families will be moved only a few miles, each unit is methodically assessed for up to a year to ensure an official will be met in the new environment. We visited one of the first successful Malayalee relocations: a community of families who four years ago, with WTI assistance, shifted from Thirulakunnu, which was in the middle of the elephants’ route.

On the front porch of a tiled bungalow, a carpet of coffee beans lay drying under a satellite dish. Inside, Kaliawa, the chatelaine, pointed out amenities, her tough hands closely patterned with henna.

'I like it much better here,’ she said, 'though I miss the moving water [the river]. Our new house is nearer the market where we sell our crops. And we got three bullock-loads more coffee this year.’ She eyed her four unmarried daughters sashaying in the yard for the Telegraph photographer. 'We work with each family to design the accommodation, also to provide social facilities, such as clinics or schools,’ Menon said later.

At the relocated Valiya Emmadi community five miles away, a sequence of more compact bungalows sloped between neat rows of amaryllis. Coffee bushes and pepper vines extended up the hill behind. As we sipped tiny glasses of sugary ginger tea, I asked Menon why such a small settlement had two wells.

'Tribal and non-tribal,’ he said. 'They won’t share a well.’

Malayalee talk proudly of their state’s religious pluralism, omitting to mention the plight of its economically disfranchised tribal peoples. After Bihar and Orissa, Kerala has a larger tribal population than any other state (1.1 per cent of almost 32 million). 'It’s hard to break down taboos,’ Menon said as we moved off. 'A recent dung-fuelled biogas project failed as the two groups refused to share the other’s animal dung.’

Two years ago Congress passed an act to protect tribal communities by granting each adult a hectare of land. (Some environmentalists said the legislation represented 'the end of the elephant’.) But as Shand said, tribal peoples gained little, as, to garner more votes, Congress altered the terms of the act to make it apply to all forest dwellers. 'Misuse of this law is a disaster,’ Shand said.

'Only five per cent of those who apply for protection are tribals. The rest are forest-dwellers and chancers.’

On the way back to camp I asked Menon how he managed to focus on animals when Oriya mothers were feeding their babies roasted mud so they didn’t cry out with hunger as they died. His face twisted in the late afternoon light. 'With grave difficulty,’ he replied. Later, he told me he found solace in the Hindu concept of acceptance.

The success of WTI relocations have made an impact in the Indian media. But sustained funding is crucial. 'A relocation is a five-year project, minimum, and you can’t stop halfway through where people are involved,’ Shand said.

As his most ambitious fundraiser to date, he is about to stage Britain’s largest ever public art exhibition. In May 250 60in tall fibreglass elephants will stand on plinths across London, only to vanish mysteriously overnight later in the summer in a cunning representation of extinction. Each animal will be decorated by an artist or celebrity – Jack Vettriano, Diane von Furstenberg and Lulu Guinness have signed up, as have Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. The models will later be auctioned.

Major donors include Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and Joanna Lumley, and business sponsors include Lalit Modi and the Indian cricket Premier League.

The organising committee reads like Shand’s top toffs address book, from the Duchess of York to Zac Goldsmith via Lord Frederick Windsor. It puts one off, somewhat; but the elephants aren’t to blame. The project was inspired by a similar event in Rotterdam in 2007. The Dutch organisers, Mark and Mike Spits, father-and-son marketeers, auctioned the models to the tune of almost £750,000. 'That success proves people are insistent on keeping the elephant in this world,’ Mike Spits said.

Meanwhile Chami, the banana farmer who electrocuted the elephant he found tearing up his livelihood, is still awaiting trial. He will plead guilty. He is the sole breadwinner in a family of nine. 

On the long drive back to camp, Menon, Shand and I discussed the prospects for Chami’s wife and children if, as seems likely, he gets banged up. Was it really possible to protect the likes of this farmer, and to allow the wild Asian elephant to thrive unmolested?

At that moment, I had my doubts. But as Shand said, can we let this majestic animal become extinct on our watch? In the last westering rays of sun, a matriarch and her calf were chewing bamboo. On the other side of the road, a few hundred yards off, a man led a bullock through a freshly harvested paddy field. We stopped. An air of unearthly calm overlay the scene. The elephant raised her head, the profile of the trunk sharp against the setting sun.

'No need for words here,’ Menon said. 'The landscape speaks for itself.’

And it did.

• Elephant Parade takes place across London from May-July (elephantparadelondon.org).

• Mystic India offers an 'Elephant Parade Tour’ to India from £2,395pp (020-7931 8273; mysticindia.co.uk)  

Article at the following link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7541596/Tuskers-in-trouble-man-and-elephant-battle-for-survival.html
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Poaching in India to increase as China opens ivory market

Ivory poaching has been a serious problem in Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) populations. Reliable records of elephants killed and ivory harvested are generally unavailable. We have used a simulation modelling approach to estimate the numbers of male elephants killed and the quantities of ivory harvested over a 20 year period (1974–94) in the Periyar Reserve of southern India. The age-structured Leslie matrix projection model was modified for this purpose by considering three segments (female, tusked male and tuskless male), relating fecundity to adult sex ratio and iteratively simulating tusked male mortality rates so as to match the observed elephant population structure at Periyar. Four different scenarios of poaching all gave very similar results. We estimate conservatively that 336–388 tuskers have been poached and 3256–3334 kg of ivory harvested by poachers over the 20 year period. The maximum harvest came from the 10–20 year age class. Trends in various demographic parameters such as population numbers, tusked male to tuskless male ratios and female fecundity are described. The implications of ivory poaching and the extremely skewed sex ratios for the conservation and management of the elephant population at Periyar are discussed.

Poaching in India to increase as China opens ivory market
Times of India
8 Aug 2008

NEW DELHI: Elephant poaching in India may increase as China plans to open its domestic market for limited sale of ivory products after a UN committee gave its consent, experts have said.

The CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) recently allowed China to import 108 tonnes of elephant ivory from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. China is considered the world's largest ivory market.

Conservationists here said it would enthuse the illegal ivory market in China that could lead to increased poaching in India.

Experts say there are just about 26,000 to 30,000 wild elephants in the country. They face multiple threats of poaching, depleting habitat and food scarcity.

The four African countries were allowed to sell a combined 108 tonnes of raw ivory as part of a one-off sale before a nine-year trade ban comes into force.

Ashok Kumar, vice chairman of the NGO Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) said: "The CITES decision is a serious setback to elephant conservation which may trigger renewed poaching for ivory in the country.

"India is more vulnerable, since there are few tuskers (In Asian elephants only the male has tusks). The skewed sex ratio of elephants has been a serious concern already.

"When Japan was allowed to lift ivory stocks from these countries in 1999, we saw an increase in elephant poaching in the country.

"We may witness the same situation in the near future. The real danger is that the small number of tuskers could be wiped out unless we have a plan to counter this," Kumar, a member of the CITES committee on the big cats, said.

According to a WTI estimate, poachers killed at least 220 elephants between 1998 and 1999 in India, whereas in 1997 the number was just about 74.

The UN banned the ivory trade in 1989 after the mass slaughter of elephants in Asia and Africa came to light. However in 1999, the committee revised its position and allowed Namibia and Zimbabwe to sell 34 tonnes of registered ivory stocks to Japan.

These southern African countries saw an increase in elephant population in the last decade. This has been a major source of conflict with humans, who try to protect crops from marauding elephants.

The ivory stocks are from elephants that died of natural causes or were killed in population-management programmes.

Last year, the committee gave Japan the status of a trading partner in the deal, while the decision on China was announced July 15 this year. Both countries had applied to the CITES to obtain the items.

WTI said in one of the biggest seizures in June 2002, Singapore authorities seized six tonnes of ivory, including 532 raw ivory tusks and 40,810 ivory hankos (Japanese name for seals). A Japanese importer reportedly ordered the illegal shipment.

Japan was therefore in violation of its CITES obligations, said Vivek Menon, South Asia director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

An IFAW survey of Asian ivory markets showed the ivory from Asian elephants was considered superior in Japan for making hankos.

Besides, the difficulty in distinguishing Asian ivory from African would allow traders to target elephants across its range.

Experts observed that the number of seizures and the volume of trade increased manifold after Japan was allowed to buy African ivory.

A Cry For Help From The Wild

Poaching In India - A Cry For Help From The Wild - Sanjay Dash

Since the beginning of the new millennium, some disturbing trends regarding the very existence of wildlife have been witnessed. The elephants in the world famous Corbett National Park have fallen prey to poachers. In March 2008, nine elephants were poached in the Park for their tusks. Subsequently, the park was closed for tourists and a manhunt was launched to find the poachers, who had penetrated into the core area of the Park. This has not been the first instance of elephant poaching in North India, though poaching is rampant in the south of India as well.
India is home to a number of protected species like the Royal Bengal Tiger, the One-horned Rhino, and the Asian elephant. These species have co-existed in harmony with the local populace for centuries. However, the tradition of recreational hunting started by princes in the early half of the last century, and a rising demand for the skin and bones of these species for traditional Far Eastern medicines, has lead to a rapid decline in their numbers.
The tiger population has all but disappeared and other wildlife areas have been affected. Such beautiful species as the tiger and the elephant are now at the mercy of man. In the wild when seen face to face these animals are awe–inspiring. I remember while visiting the Betla National Park walking directly in front of a eleven foot tusker - such a thrill! The tusker was barely visible with the fog hanging thickly in the woods. I wonder how often one witnesses such rare sights.
Poaching Hotspots
North India is known for poaching tigers, the North East of Inia for poaching Rhino and South India for poaching elephants. The main areas of tiger poaching are Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
Mindless Murder – All For A Fast Buck!!
There are a number of reasons for the recent increase in poaching.
*The use of animal body parts like tusks, horns, skin and bones for commercial purposes.
*Many elephants are killed in retribution for destroying standing crops. Other animals are killed for meat or skin.
*Commercial exploitation of the body parts of poached animals is solely the work of large gangs, who are well connected and financed by well-established traders who have a network of smuggling associates both in India and abroad.
*Often the local population is poor and therefore is easily lured by poachers for a few hundred rupees. They know the animal tracks well and serve as guides within the jungle. At many places the rampant poaching is due to poverty at the local level. With no avenues for employment or development they find this the easiest method for securing a livelihood.
*Increasing political patronage of the offenders ensures that those who are caught are also let out on bail because of high political connections. Such cases greatly demoralize forest rangers. Not only are forest rangers short-staffed, they are also poorly equipped, with primitive guns, no night vision equipment and no security for their own lives. The officers who do take interest in the conservation efforts are promptly replaced by someone less efficient, someone who would turn a blind eye to the activities of the poachers and timber mafia and give them a free hand.
Modus Operandi Of Poaching
The poachers have long given up crude methods of killing the animals and have adopted gruesome methods to ensnare and kill animals.
Some of the more prevalent methods are:
Shooting: Shooting is the most common method.
Pit-poaching: This is used to trap rhinos and other large animals. Large pits are dug in the forest as traps and the animal is then killed for its horns and buried in the same pit.

Electrocution: This is the latest method wherein a live wire is left dangling over the animal tracks. The animal is instantly killed and the poacher gets away quickly. It is used to kill elephants, rhinos, tigers and wild boar.
Nails and shrapnel: This was used most recently in Corbett where elephants were fed nails and shrapnel mixed in guru. The poor animals died due to excessive internal bleeding.
Poisoning: Pesticides or rat-poison is used against herbivores and wild cats to prevent them from killing cattle or destroying crops.
Trap and snare: Used for herbivores and some reptiles.
Stick and glue: It is used mostly for fast-flying birds where the bird gets stuck to the glued end of a stick held in the open.

Preventive measures to curb poaching
*Provide safe corridors for elephants away from standing crops.
*Recruit locals from traditional hunting communities as wildlife guards.
*Offer cash incentives to local people to elicit their co-operation with wildlife officials.
*Review and strengthen security arrangements in protected areas.
*Create special teams to take on armed criminals.
*Equip forest guards with sophisticated firearms and other night vision equipment.
*Fill in the existing vacancies in the forest department to ensure greater patrolling of the parks and hence better detection of poaching.
*Carry out surprise checks with the aid of concerned agencies to detect transport and movement of wildlife products for illegal trading.
*Keep track of suspicious characters and raid their premises from time to time.
*There must be a mechanism in place to ensure that funds earmarked for forest reserves and conservation efforts reach the concerned authorities with minimal interference from the state government or bureaucracy.
*The Minister of Environment and Forests and the Minister of Home Affairs must ensure that there is co-operation between the state and central governments to prosecute illegal trade offenders.
*Land earmarked for conservation should not be re-zoned as in the case of the Melghat reserve in Maharashtra.
*To elicit greater co-operation from countries like China and Taiwan in fighting the illegal trade in animal parts. They must adopt and enforce stringent legislation to prevent such a trade.
*Offenders should not be released on bail, but should be punished.
The threat of poaching to endangered species like the tiger, rhino and elephant is now widely recognized and accepted. As demonstrated by the success of Project Tiger in 1972, a strong political will like that of then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, is needed to put in place the infrastructure to prevent poaching. It is necessary to take the locals into confidence and enlist their help in preserving these species. It is important to educate them about the ecological devastation, which will result once these species disappear. Now is the time when we must respond urgently to the cry for help from the wild. These species are endangered now, but will be extinct later.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Bhubaneswar, April 25 (IANS) Poachers shot dead an elephant and brutally hacked around its tusks to extract ivory in the Redhakhol Forest Range in Sambalpur district of Orissa, forest officials said Sunday.
The tusker’s mutilated body was found Sunday by officials during the ongoing elephant census in Rampur area of the forest range, over 300 km from here.
“The elephant was killed near a water body. It received two gun shots. The ivory was then extracted with sharp weapons,” said Prafulla Kumar Sahu, a forest guard.
Range Officer Tankadhar Behera said: “We have lodged a case and started investigation into the matter.”
The Orissa wildlife department Thursday started a survey to determine the number of wild elephants in the state.
According to a 2007 census, there were 1,862 elephants in Orissa. A government report states that over 300 elephants have been killed in the state in the past six years.

Growing elephant deaths in Orissa raise alarm

Bhubaneswar, Oct 7 (IANS) In the last 19 years in Orissa, 231 elephants fell victim to poachers while 166 were killed in accidents and 173 more died from natural causes, says a wildlife NGO. While the government gives more conservative estimates, experts say there is enough cause for alarm.

Biswajit Mohanty, secretary of NGO Wildlife Society of Orissa, who gave IANS the figures, said at least 155 of the elephants died due to electrocution in over 10 years.

“Immediate measures are required if we want to protect the elephants. The animals are dying due to lack of proper measures by the government,” a worried Mohanty said.

“Wildlife has little chance to survive due to rapid loss of habitat in the state which is obsessed with mining and industrialisation,” he added.

“The State Board for Wildlife, a high-power body chaired by the chief minister, has not met even once in the last two years, though it is mandatory that a meeting takes place every six months,” he said.

There has been no meeting of honorary wildlife wardens in the last two years, Mohanty pointed out.

“This clearly reveals the abject apathy of the forest department to engage with wildlife experts and conservationists who can provide valuable inputs and advice for protection of wildlife in the state,” he said.

“The department is wary of calling meetings as they might face uncomfortable questions about their abject failure to protect wildlife and allow mining in wildlife-rich areas,” he claimed.

Activist Ranjit Pattnaik, another wildlife expert, said: “It is really alarming the way elephants are dying. The central as well as the state governments need to take urgent measures to protect these mammals.”

Government figures on elephant deaths are, however, way less.

Orissa chief wildlife warden P.N. Padhi said: “On an average, about 50 elephants died every year in the past 10 years. While about six to seven die from electrocution, about six elephants get poached every year.”

“The number of deaths due to accidents is becoming more than those due to poaching. Accidents include electrocution, trains mowing them down and the animals falling into pits,” he said.

In the latest incidents, two full grown elephants died of electrocution Sep 6 - one in Dhenkanal district and another in Cuttack.

Most of the accidents take place in Keonjhar, Sundergarh, Sambalpur and Dhenkanal districts.

Orissa is home to 1,886 elephants, according to the census earlier this year. There are three elephant reserves in the state at Mayurbhanj, Mahanadi and Sambalpur.

“We have taken action against forest staff and booked electricians under the wildlife protection act after four elephants died early this year,” Padhi said.

Three elephants had been killed due to sagging electric wires in Durlabhpur village in Keonjhar district in August and another died soon after in Ongul district.

“We are sensitising the officials. We started an elephant management plan last year from the state’s own resources. In this plan, we will include four components, including an increase in forest cover, especially habitats of the elephants, habitat protection and anti-poaching measures,” he added.