Elephant deaths highlight struggle between wildlife conservation and development in Uttarakhand

In India, around 100 elephants and 500 human deaths due to such conflicts are reported every year.

More than 170 elephants died in Uttarakhand in the past five years, and the state government appears to be glossing over the deaths.

The forest department, for its part, has been silent, much to the surprise of wildlife experts. Of the 170 listed elephants, 44 seem to have died under “mysterious” circumstances, and the Uttarakhand government has not provided a satisfactory explanation.

The state government has merely said the reasons behind the deaths of the pachyderms were “unknown”. Environmentalists, enraged at the deaths, attribute the state government’s silence to the fact that it is expanding the Dehradun airport, which is close to an elephant corridor named Shivalik Elephant Reserve that has been denotified.

“This is a very dangerous situation if the reason of death is unknown,” a top bureaucrat of the Ministry of Environment and Forests told MoneyControl. 

In India, elephants are practically worshipped across the country.

The bureaucrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said such deaths can never be termed as “unknown”, nor can it be called “mysterious”. “The reason must be listed, else we are seeing a very scary trend.”

The bureaucrat said the deaths surprised him because elephants are—actually—not concentrated in Uttarakhand but in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. These animals are concentrated in an estimated 29 wildlife reserves in and around India that cover around 65,000 sq km of forestland.

“The ministry has taken a very serious note of these deaths and is trying to find out—with help from the Uttarakhand government—if these animals were poisoned,” the bureaucrat said. “Such deaths are not just happening in Uttarakhand alone, but also in a host of other states. People are just not caring about such elephant deaths.”

Big crisis

The issue of elephant deaths has snowballed into a huge crisis in Uttarakhand because the state government has decided to cut through a large chunk of forest land to make space for an airport expansion. There is fear among wildlife experts and environmentalists that these elephants could be poisoned by a section of people who want the elephant population to dwindle so that there is no hue and cry when mega projects are planned close to the elephant habitat.

Aditya Panda, one of Asia’s leading elephant experts, told Moneycontrol that the Uttarakhand government should immediately investigate the cause of the death of elephants in the state.

“The silence of the government will not help anyone. We must know why the elephants died. The numbers are very high. And if there are reports that an elephant habitat has been cleared for an airport project, many would wonder where will the elephants go?”

Panda said the issue of elephant deaths is not restricted to Uttarakhand, such deaths were happening in many states across India. “Intelligent land use planning and protecting wildlife corridors will prevent this. But this has to be made into a priority subject by all state governments. It is happening in some states.”

The Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) says there are nearly 30,000 wild elephants in the country, accounting for more than half of the entire Asian elephant population.

India has a huge problem when it comes to elephants, Panda said. There is an ever-swelling human population and there is a need to grow more crops. “So the clash is routine between elephants and human beings because forest land which once belonged to these animals is being taken away for growing crops,” said Panda.

According to a report, elephant-human conflict causes 650 human deaths and that of 400 elephants in Asia every year. In India, around 100 elephants and 500 human deaths due to such conflicts are reported every year.

“The Indian government must set its priorities right when it comes to wildlife. In north Bengal, important train lines cut through elephant habitats, deaths are routine. I must also say elephant poaching is not that high in India,” said Panda.

He said the Uttarakhand government should have been extremely sensitive while denotifying the elephant corridor.

What is the government doing?

So how serious is the issue in Uttarakhand where the state government does not see the recent denotification as a crisis? The Uttarakhand State Wildlife Board—under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat—approved the proposal to denotify the Shivalik Elephant Reserve to make way for the expansion of Dehradun’s Jolly Grant airport.

The airport expansion also requires felling of 10,000 trees covering 87 hectares of forest land, a move already sanctioned by the Uttarakhand State Wildlife Board.

“They do not care about anything. They have some terrible arrogance. For them, elephants do not matter, wild animals do not matter. Sadly, political decisions are always taken at the cost of natural consequences. The big problem which has emerged is that the land for the proposed airport falls in a sensitive zone of Shivalik Elephant Reserve, very close to the Kansaro-Barkot elephant corridor,” said Belinda Wright, a top wildlife expert.

Wright said the Uttarakhand government said in a statement that the project was meant for the state’s development and an elephant reserve could not be allowed to hamper the state’s growth.

“They are making the same mistakes Europe did during the industrial revolution. The entire population of wolves disappeared from the UK and now huge amounts are being spent to save wolves. In reality it should have been the opposite in Uttarakhand. We all need airports. But wildlife comes first, then comes business. Those in power make wrong decisions and then get stuck and have no option to return. But they do not want to hear what science tells them, what nature tells them,” top wildlife expert Sanjay Gubbi told Moneycontrol.

A detailed questionnaire to Uttarakhand Chief Wildlife Warden JS Suhag went unanswered. In a recent meeting of the wildlife board, Suhag, claim sources, said the state government was sanguine that the project would not hamper the movement of elephants.

“Wildlife is a part of the state’s economy and both need to co-exist. The state government cannot drop one for the sake of another. Our studies show the elephant corridor will not be hampered. And the notification (on Shivalik Elephant Reserve) was an order without the Cabinet's approval,” Suhag told board members.

Officials in Dehradun said the Uttarakhand government's decision to send a proposal to the National Wildlife Board for the transfer of 243 acres of forest land to the Airport Authority of India (AAI) met with protests.

Environmentalists say the state government violated a clear direction issued in 2002 by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to consider alternative tracts land for the airport. The ministry had issued the order to protect the elephants in the area, their natural habitats and to reduce human-elephant conflict. An elephant reserve might not have been specifically mentioned in the Forest Conservation Act 1980, but it’s absolutely logical that the Act’s protections extend to the land in question.

The Act categorically says reserved forests with high diversity value should always be protected and not diverted for anything else. “The State Board for Wildlife is a statutory board and it is constituted under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. So it cannot change rules. Its role and rules are completely limited to what is prescribed in the statute,” said Wright.

The Shivalik Elephant Reserve includes the forest divisions of Dehradun, Haridwar, Lansdowne, Haldwani, Tanakpur,  Ramnagar and parts of the Corbett Tiger Reserve and the Rajaji National Park.

Wildlife officials are now radio-collaring pachyderms to prevent man-animal conflict during the Maha Kumbh next year. The Uttarakhand government had received permission from the central government to radio-collar ten elephants and study their movement.

In June 2020, the number of elephants in the state had reached 2,026. In 2012, there were 1,559 elephants, which increased to 1,839 in 2017.

Human-elephant conflicts and elephant deaths are routine in Uttarakhand. The deaths of the elephants came into the limelight in 2001 when a forest ranger, six elephants, and two tigers were killed by poachers in the Corbett Tiger Reserve. The poachers had also injured three forest guards while they were patrolling the sanctuary’s dense forest.

Gubbi said the move was a blatant violation of the Act. He said he was surprised as to how the members of the board could “even vote to denotify a portion of the reserve. If they cannot protect wildlife, who will? Why can’t they find an alternative space for the airport?”

Wildlife rules given a miss?

If the state government officials had followed the rule book, they would have to undertake an environmental impact assessment and get the project approved under the Biological Diversity Act 2002. And then, the project should have been ratified by the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).

Gubbi said every state government must be clear about what constitutes forest land, what constitutes farm land, and what constitutes land for industry. “Overlaps will always trigger problems. You are shifting someone to include someone, and it is coming at the cost of the one who is displaced, in this case the elephants.”

Gubbi agreed with Panda that the “mysterious” deaths of elephants were not due to poachers.

“There needs to be a proper investigation, no one should sit over it,” said Wright.

The WTI says poaching can have serious implications for Asian elephants, which are already threatened by habitat loss, conflicts and accidental deaths on railway tracks in India. “Selective poaching of males causes imbalances in the gender ratio in Asian elephant populations. Asian ivory is preferred to African ivory for making hankos or signature seals which form a major proportion of ivory use in Japan,” the WTI said in a report.

Wildlife experts say if elephants get close to human habitats, the best strategy is to let the animals leave at their own pace. Sometimes, wildlife officials guide the pachyderms back to the forest.

But what happens when the wildlife corridor is blown away? That is a question the Uttarakhand government must answer.