The largest of all land beasts, elephants stand as one of the majestic creatures on Earth.?However, over the years, elephants have become victims of brutal killings not so much as a commodity, but more for the land they occupy.?
Humans have encroached upon their homes in an effort to satiate their never-ending greed. We have left them homeless and hapless.?
Apart from their lands being destroyed and invaded, elephants have for years been hunted down for their tusks and even tortured in the name of religion. In India, as we all know, elephants are considered to be an embodiment of Lord Ganesha on earth. Yet they are forced to wear decorative headgear and paraded at temples festivals for hours on end and treated with utter disregard.?
Here are some of the most recent cases of abuse meted out by humans on these gentle giants and things only seem to be going downhill.?
A pregnant elephant in Kerala died of excruciating pain after it bit a fruit that was filled with firecrackers. The shocking incident was reported from the Malappuram district of Kerala last week.?
A forest officer who was part of the team who tied to rescue the elephant narrated the details of the horrific death on social media. According to Mohan Krishnan, a Section Forest Officer with the Kerala Forest Department, the elephant was around 15 years old.
"She came out of the forest in search of food, but she could not have know what the selfish men could do to her. She trusted everyone and ate whatever they gave her. And when the pineapple that she ate exploded in her mouth she could have been more concerned about the baby growing inside her," Krishnan wrote in a Facebook Post.?
He further stated that?the panicked elephant ran amok while in excruciating pain, but still did not attack any human being that came across or damage any houses?that were on the way.??
Apparently ‘overpopulation of elephants' is a common problem in some countries of Africa.?Botswana shares a border with Zimbabwe and apparently has the problem of having ‘too many elephants’ too.
Botswana boasts a population of 1,35,000 elephants. A majority of them reside in the wild and they do not know the tragic fate that awaits them. The country is going to auction licences to?hunt a total of 70 elephants, in a bid to ‘end human-wildlife conflict’.?This will be the first such hunt to take place since President Mokgweetsi Masisi lifted the five-year hunting ban last year.??
In 2019,?Zimbabwe?sold their Elephants to China and Dubai in an attempt to reduce its high population in the country. They were ready to sell their elephants to any country which is ready to take responsibility for the shipping. Although less cruel than Bostwana's method of dealing with overpopulation, critics have said that uprooting elephants from their natural habitat has it's own risks and can severely hamper with their well-being.?
Elephants are highly intelligent, self-aware, and socially complex animals and separating from their herd could take a massive toll on them.?Critics claimed that selling elephants could subject them to more cruelty and establish a troubling pattern at a time when elephants are being slaughtered en masse to satisfy the demand for ivory.?
Another growing problem of human-wildlife conflict is elephants wandering off into human habitats and suffering painful deaths. In 2018,four elephants died after a speeding train ran over them in Odisha’s Jharsuguda district. Reports state that the herd of elephants was crossing the railway?line when a speeding goods?train squashed them to death.?
Elephants have a habit of moving from forest to forest, but rapid development has forced the species to adapt,?In yet another tragic incident, two elephants were killed after being hit by a passenger train near Batasi in Darjeeling in West Bengal back in 2019. In a video that went viral, one can see a train stopped in its tracks, to allow an elephant and its calf to safely cross over to the other side.This video was also from West Bengal, where man-animal conflict is quite common owing to the fact the train tracks mostly pass through jungles.
In 2017, photographer Biplab Hazra a?heartbreaking moment of a panicked elephant and her calf fleeing a mob of people in West Bengal captures the reality of human-wildlife conflict.
Hazra won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year in the 2017 Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards for a picture named 'Hell is here' which shows elephants fleeing tarballs and it defined the human-wildlife conflict the exists across the world.?
West Bengal has for a long time served as the migratory route for the elephants and the increasing human-wildlife conflict has threatened their survival. With his pictures, Hazra hopes to bring in a change in people's mindset and save these gentle giants before the situation gets worse.??
The article was originally published on February 13, 2020, and has been updated since.