Elephants in the room

On July 7, 2013, herds of elephants from the nearby Saranda forest stormed into Rourkela, a ‘steel city’ in Odisha. They had to be held captive till they could be safely herded out of the town. This was the first time that elephant herds had ever entered a city space — villages, yes, but never cities.

While a platonic relationship betweens humans and elephants have existed for millennia, human-elephant conflict too has existed for just as long. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) says an average of 400 people and 100 elephants die every year as a result of human-elephant conflicts.

With the rising number of conflicts in India, research on the relationship between the two species has never been so vital. At the frontier of this is Dr Piers Locke, senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Dr Locke, who spent the best part of last year at various parts of South Asia — from Chitwan National Park in Nepal to areas around the Esala Perahera or the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka — along with colleagues, is carrying out pioneering work in ethnoelephantology. We asked Dr Locke in an email interview what he makes of the latest spate of human-animal clashes in India.

What is ethnoelephantology?

Ethnoelephantology is a field meant to be an umbrella subject that deals with the study of human-elephant relations in their social, historical and ecological aspects. This includes study of captive elephant management, conservation, human-elephant conflict or the ancient Indian literature on elephant anatomy, behaviour, and husbandry. It’s about recognising the myriad ways in which the lives, histories and habitats of humans and elephants are entangled with each other.

How did you get interested in this field?

I was inspired after reading Travels on My Elephant by Mark Shand. In this travelogue, he recounts his 600 mile journey across India, apprenticing as the mahout of an elephant named Tara, purchased from the Sonepur Mela. He now runs the successful charity, Elephant Family, which supports initiatives on elephant corridors in India.

What are the new approaches applied to ease such conflicts?

I have recently been involved with an exciting new project to mitigate human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka. Working with people at the Centre for the Study of the Asian Elephant, Rajarata University, Sri Lanka, we have run a trial of a project using a new approach to electric fences to protect villagers from elephants. These are people trying to resettle their homelands after years of dislocation as a result of war. Previous attempts to fence elephants into territories designated by humans have failed — there was simply too much fence to maintain, and elephants don’t like to be told what is and is not their space. This project, by contrast, puts the fence around the village, and gives the villagers the responsibility for maintaining the fence.

How have humans and elephants shaped each others’ lives through history?

Humans and elephants have cohabited on the Indian subcontinent for millennia. Sri Lanka would not be able to support such a large population of wild elephants if it were not for the 12,000 tanks built by the ancient Sinhalese, while the Mauryan Empire’s reservation of forests to catch elephants for war and trade has influenced the historical distribution of India’s wild elephants.

What role do you think conservation efforts need to play?

It is an error to think about the natural world as if it were something separate from and untouched by humanity. This myth of a pristine nature in which humans do not belong, has led to policies of ‘fortress conservation’ that some argue has exacerbated human-elephant conflict. I think rather than this approach, it is worthwhile to pursue initiatives that encourage strategies for peaceful coexistence.

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