Image
In an apparent act of area domination, a herd of elephants on Saturday trampled one Mahesh Singh Munda, a Jharkhand forest department menial, to death. Munda was returning to his house in Tamad near Jharkhand's capital Ranchi on Saturday when he came face to face with a group of elephants. He could not escape.

Munda's untimely death is not a standalone incident of elephants killing humans in Jharkhand, where they once co-existed peacefully for decades. Today, both human and elephants have overlapping territories in Jharkhand. Consequently, the relations between the two have become bellicose with over 950 people trampled to death by elephants since the creation of Jharkhand in November, 2000. The figure is scary. Simply put, the pachyderms have been killing a person in Jharkhand every fifth day.

A large number of these deaths have been caused by the rampaging elephants, many of whom have developed a taste for mahua (local intoxicant used for preparing liquor).

"This is one bad habit the elephants have picked up from human. They can wreak havoc for the liquor, which is brewed in many of the villages in Jharkhand's backwater," says a forest department official in Ranchi.

The forest officials have also recorded unnatural deaths of many elephants during the period. The villagers are believed to have killed some of these elephants by shooting them with poison-tipped arrows or spiking food with poisons.

According to experts, constant human pressure at the forests has forced elephants to leave their homes in search of food, which in turn triggers conflict with locals. The elephants usually require more than 500 kms of home range wherein they will hunt for the food. They consume 250 kg of food and 150 litres of water a day for which the elephant herds migrate from one forest to another (corridors). Naturally, they are worse hit by the loss of habitat, as elephant sanctuaries are now home to human

Worse still, the elephants are feeling a pressure on their habitat at a time their numbers have gone up in Jharkhand. With their corridors continuously encroached by the villagers, the elephants wreak havoc when they move in search of food - raiding crops, knocking down houses and killing people-and leave behind a trail of destruction.

This is not all. Some of the elephant corridors in Jharkhand are riddled with mining sites where activities like blasting disturb the herd to the extent that they attack humans.