Elephants and People on Collision Course
Copyright 2000 Inter Press Service
December 12, 2000
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Dec. 12 - Wealthy countries must provide technical and financial assistance to help resolve the habitat clash between humans and elephants that is threatening the very survival of the gigantic mammals in Asia, says the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The massive displacement of the human population, as well as resettlement programs, have triggered fatal confrontations between humans and elephants, according to a study by WWF experts released here today.
Asian elephants have been pushed from their forest habitat to be used in carrying timber, or by human efforts to create farmland and other poorly planned development schemes, according to Elizabeth Kemf and Charles Santiapillai, the study's authors.
The Asian elephant descended from the African elephant some 55 million years ago and its population covered the area from modern Iraq and Syria to the Yellow River in China.
But today it is only found in the area ranging from India to Vietnam, except for a tiny, threatened population in southwest Yunnan Province in China.
The human population of Asia's tropical regions is growing rapidly and encroaching upon the elephants' dwindling forest habitat. Approximately 20 percent of the world's people live in or near the current existing habitat of the Asian elephant, according to the WWF report.
Kemf, a human geographer and manager of species conservation information at the WWF, and Santiapillai, a zoology professor at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, concluded that the "fierce competition for living space has resulted in human suffering, a dramatic loss of forest cover, and reduced Asian elephants numbers."
The two scientists calculate there are 35,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants -- less than one-tenth of the estimated total of African elephants.
In Vietnam, officials estimate that the elephant population was 1,500 to 2,000 in 1990, but plummeted eight years later to fewer than 150.
Males and females alike are killed for their hide and meat, and also for their tusks. The skins are used for bags and footwear.
"Asian elephants live in the region of the world with the densest human population, which is growing at about 3 percent a year," according to the scientists.
Deforestation to create human settlements and pursue agricultural activities is altering traditional elephant migration routes. Increasingly, there are incidents of hungry elephants raiding farmland, which leads to violent clashes between the animals and the human population.
Hundreds of people die each year in elephant-related incidents in Asia. More than 300 deaths annually occur in India alone.
Recently, the remains of 12 elephants were found in Sumatra, Indonesia, on an oil palm plantation. They had been poisoned by plantation workers who had then tried to cover up the killing, according to Kemf and Santiapillai.
In past eras in Asia, elephants were trained for military purposes, for logging, construction, transport, and domesticated for use in religious, cultural and social activities.
In Myanmar, formerly Burma, there are approximately 2,800 elephants registered in the logging industry. Estimates are that another 4,000 are working in individually run logging operations.
In Thailand, some 3,500 elephants were left without a useful purpose after authorities banned their use for transporting logs in 1989. Thai officials also removed the elephants from the crowded streets of Bangkok in 1995 to protect them from the suffocating temperatures and pollution.
The WWF study states that "the growing conflict between humans and elephants is one of the most tragic and urgent challenges facing the region's governments today."
People living in elephant habitat areas should receive government aid for protecting their homes, recommends the WWF study. Doing so would prevent human residents from reacting with hostility towards the animals.
The report also indicates that, in certain situations, area residents should be paid compensation for crop losses caused by elephants, and help must be provided to the families of victims of fatal elephant attacks.
The two experts suggest that a high-level (ministerial) meeting involving the governments of the 13 countries with Asian elephant populations "would help obtain a firm commitment to conserve and manage the species across its range."
Kemf and Santiapillai also state that "national and sub- regional conservation strategies should address issues such as unsustainable logging, the expansion of teak and oil palm plantations, and other development schemes."
But the elephant conservation strategies require the support of the international community, stresses the WWF study.
"Richer governments have a duty to give technical and financial aid to tackle urgent human/elephant problems which threaten the survival of a heritage that belongs not only to Asia but to all the world's peoples."
The WWF maintains that the responsibility of the governments also extends to training personnel to take on the sociological, economic and ecological challenges that threaten the survival of the earth's largest land mammals.