THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Forest Department will soon launch a massive awareness campaign to reduce human-elephant conflict near forest fringes across the state.
The development paradigm in the forest fringes will also be altered to reconcile the needs of the elephants with the needs of development.
Wild elephant deaths this year have been officially estimated at 100, huge by any standards. Though the department says that the deaths are natural, animal activists feel that most deaths are the result of crude methods adopted by humans to keep wild jumbos from crossing into their territory.
“Even while acknowledging that people have their rights, wild elephants too need to be protected,” said a top department official. The plan, therefore, is to educate people on practical means of coexistence.
“Everyone involved in creating conflict will have to be made stakeholders in the mitigation programme,” said Dr Pritviraj Fernando, a top conservation scientist from Sri Lanka.
The Forest Department plans to adopt some of the measures Dr Fernando and team have successfully implemented in Sri Lanka, an island where elephant density is fairly high.
“Conflict between elephants and people mainly arises because of planned and unplanned development without appropriate safeguards to prevent conflict,” Dr Fernando said.
One option is the construction of electric fences around agricultural lands. “These have been found very effective and are harmless. It can also be dismantled after the harvest so as to allow the elephants to enter the land to eat leftovers,” Dr Fernando said.
The other strategy being considered is the cultivation of buffer crops, crops that are unattractive for elephants, in between the pineapple or plantain farms and the elephant corridor.
