Understanding and Improving Human-Elephant Relationships

November 2018

About Dr M. Ananda Kumar Dr Kumar has dedicated the past decade to working with local communities in India to find solutions to human-elephant conflict. Because the majority of the Asian elephant population live and roam outside of national parks, trying to promote peaceful co-existence with elephants moving through landscapes transformed by people is a high priority issue. His initiatives are proof that with determination, dedication and the right solutions in place humans and elephants can live side by side in an increasingly crowded world.

Dr Kumar and his organisation, India’s Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), focus on landscapes that experience high conflict – for example, where tens of thousands of people live in several villages scattered throughout elephant habitat. His success is inspiring others to adopt his analytical approach from the Valparai plateau in the state of Tamil Nadu. Here, 70,000 people depend upon the tea estates interspersed with ancient forest patches where 120 elephants still eke out their existence and dangerous surprise encounters often occur.

It is Dr Kumar’s spirit of innovation, and his empathy for elephants and people, that has inspired enduring support from Elephant Family since 2011. Your donations will further support his expanding work in both the Valparai and Hassan landscapes of India helping to save the lives of elephants and people alike.

Figure 1: L-R: (1) Award-winning conservationist, Dr Ananda Kumar, (2) elephants browsing peacefully on natural vegetation in between tea plantations in Valparai, (3) an early warning text message send to warn villagers about elephants spotted nearby.

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The Valparai Landscape Dr Kumar’s initiatives in Valparai have reduced human deaths from conflict with elephants to zero for two years running. These simple but effective solutions include voice calls to mobile phones, alert lights on tall masts and bus broadcast announcement systems on the Valparai plateau, which increases the safety of people working on some of the tea and coffee estates when elephants are nearby. There is now a need to expand these systems to cover additional areas and to create a network of people in selected communities to feed data into Dr Kumar’s Elephant Information Network.

Your support is vital in maintaining the running costs of these crucial, life-saving early warning systems.

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Figure 2: Tea plantation workers are now protected from chance elephant encounters on their way to and from work, armed with the knowledge of the elephants' whereabouts.

Figure 3: Human-elephant coexistence in Valparai - If tea plantation workers and elephants are aware of each other's presence and maintain a safe distance, no conflict will occur.

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The Hassan Landscape Hassan in the state of Karnataka has a small population of 30 elephants and 35,000 people who are mainly small scale coffee growers and subsistence paddy farmers. Despite the relatively small number of elephants living there, human-elephant conflict is high.

The credibility of the Valparai project resulted in Dr Kumar’s team being entrusted to work in Hassan, where conflicts had previously caused the Forest Department to resort to capturing 22 wild elephants within one year. Most of these elephants were sent to camps and others translocated to national parks, however Dr Kumar saw this was not a long-term solution as the elephants travelled back or new ones moved in to the area. Dr Kumar saw the need in Hassan to implement safe early warning solutions and see the issue as “problem locations” rather than blame “problem animals”.

Your support will allow Dr Kumar to replicate some of his early warning systems that have worked so well in Valparai, such as bulk SMS, outbound voice call alert systems, mobile operated elephant alert LED systems and unique measures such as a digital billboard and automated announcement systems. All the measures are simple, adoptable, replicable, and participative. Crucially, they facilitate sharing responsibilities by local communities for effective human-elephant conflict (HEC) management and all are helpful in preventing accidental and sometimes fatal encounters with elephants.

These initiatives will be measured to assess if they can successfully alleviate pressure on elephants and permanently replace the need for misguided calls by communities for widespread elephant capture and removal operations.

Figure 4: A misty morning in the coffee plantations of Hassan make local farmers vulnerable to surprise elephant encounters.

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Looking to the Future Safe guarding crops from elephants is one of the biggest challenges in the field of human-elephant conflict resolution across Asia. Importantly, Dr Kumar’s team is working with scientists to develop optical fences that would warn farmers in advance about elephant intrusions into nearby land, while allowing farmers and families to get much-needed sleep when no elephants are near. An optical fence prototype was developed and field-tested successfully by scientists between April and July this year. The production of these fences began in July with the first optical fence installation expected in Hassan this September. If such measures are viewed favourably by farmers there will be an opportunity to expand to other places in the region. If proven beneficial, the optical fences will be a breakthrough in human-elephant conflict management.

The monsoon season, which lasts from July to September in southern India, is a relatively quiet time for Dr Kumar and his team. HEC usually decreases during this period as elephants return to national parks and forests where food and water resources are in abundance. The arrival of the monsoon rains also makes it difficult for Dr Kumar’s team to install any of their early warning systems. However, the monitoring of elephant movement and upkeep of the already installed early warning systems is ongoing during this period. Once the rains have receded in September/October HEC education workshops and meetings with local villagers resume.

Upcoming activities:

• Analyse the efficacy of early warning systems. • Continuation of HEC workshops for local villages. Professional artists will be hired to perform

street plays to convey the importance of elephants within the landscape and include information on how to avoid direct encounters with elephants.

• Installation of optical fences around paddy farms in Hassan. • Installation of alert beacons along critical stretches of road in Hassan.

Expected long-term outcomes of Dr Kumar’s programme

1. Reduced number of human deaths and a reduction in pressure and stress to wild elephants. 2. Reduction in crop damage, to be potentially further increased through optical fences. 3. Increased safety for people by removing fear of elephant presence in their daily activities. 4. Increased local participation in human-elephant conflict management. 5. Improved relationships with the Forest Department and better safety measures for coffee

planters, the farming community and community leaders. 6. The landscape will become a model for neighbouring areas such as the Coorg region, where

future projects could replicate proven measures from the project.

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