With a special control room in place, and at least 200 forest personnel, veterinarians, and kumki elephants on ground, a wide net has been cast in the Cumbum area of Theni district to tranquilise and translocate Tamil Nadu’s most wanted — the rogue tusker Arikomban. The situation has been peaceful for the past four days, with signals from the wild elephant’s radio collar indicating he has been staying put in the forest near Shanmuganathi Dam. But the bedlam caused by his presence in the Cumbum town on May 27, which eventually led to the death of local resident Paulraj, has put people in Tamil Nadu on the offensive. The Forest Department has declared that if Arikomban attacks or raids residential areas again, he will be tranquilised immediately. The plan is to then relocate him again, this time deeper into the forest, just over a month after a special task force team translocated him around 100 km away from Chinnakanal in Kerala’s Idukki to the Periyar Tiger Reserve on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border.
But the question is, what next? Though translocation is a mitigation measure routinely employed to resolve human-elephant interactions in India, studies show that it is not always successful, and relocated tuskers often attempt to return to their former turfs. In fact, as per a report by the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature-India, “Animal behaviour dictates that the translocated elephant will try to move back to its original range, or at the very least explore the new habitat to learn about resource distribution, thus eventually straying out into new farmlands or charting a route back to its old home range.” Several instances of such attempted, or even successful, returns by elephants can be cited from the past few years alone.
As recently as in February this year, a crop-raiding tuskless bull elephant in Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri was caught, tranquilised, and released in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, only to find that he spent just a few days in his new turf before embarking on a trek of more than 100 km to reach Coimbatore, in a seeming attempt to get back to his home range. On his way, he ventured into densely-populated areas, even attacking an 80-year-old man in Madukkarai and damaging a Forest Department vehicle. He was later tranquilised at a plantain farm in Perur and once again translocated to a dense forest area in Ulandy range, where he spent nearly two months. But he foraged into human settlements again by the end of April, despite kumki elephants being deployed specifically to prevent him from doing so. Up to six forest officials were injured amid attempts to drive him back into the forest.
Even Arikomban, who was relocated to a forest area close to the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border on April 29, was recorded to have travelled approximately 40 km in four days. The tusker happens to have a notorious penchant for rice, in pursuit of which he has routinely raided ration shops in Chinnakanal, earning him the now-infamous moniker Arikomban (ari meaning ‘rice’ and komban meaning ‘tusker’ in Malayalam). His attempt on May 14 to visit a ration shop in Tamil Nadu’s Meghamalai, even after the relocation, was telling. This means that his habituation to human food may continue to influence his tendency to venture out to human settlements.
Besides, even though the tusker was dropped off in a place where plenty of food and water is available, case studies have shown that this may not always be enough reason for elephants to remain in the region they have been relocated to.
The WWF report mentions the example of Vinayaga, a young bull elephant who was translocated from Coimbatore Forest Division to Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in December 2018. The forest officers monitored him for three and a half months, apparently only to realise that “old habits die hard”. Somehow finding gaps in the elephant proof trenches, he managed to forage into human settlements and raid crops, returning to the forests when he was driven back by anti-depredation teams, and then waiting for the opportunity to strike again. However, constant monitoring at the trenches also forced Vinayaga to explore new areas within the forest for days on end, which indicated that he can survive just as well without resorting to plundering crops.
Supriya Sahu IAS, Tamil Nadu’s Additional Chief Secretary of Environment, Climate Change, and Forests, points out that Arikomban is a majestic elephant, standing at a height of around 11 ft. “He is also incredibly fast. In a healthy state, he can walk up to 45-60 km a day, and move swiftly between forests and human habitations,” she says.
In his research paper ‘Whose Issue? Representations of Human-Elephant Conflict in Indian and International Media’, environmental and urban geographer Maan Barua finds that the media, which play a crucial role in shaping conversations surrounding human-wildlife interactions, often let go of nuance to frame such issues in polarising or dramatic terms. Nowhere has this tendency been more stark than in the coverage of Arikomban, whose translocation from Chinnakanal received an extent of attention that has been unprecedented in the history of such cases in south India. Local TV channels dedicated an entire day to cover the translocation live, building a sensationalist narrative around the pachyderm. Several channels and online portals stated that Arikomban has killed at least 10 people in the Chinnakanal area, even though there is no official data to back this claim.
In his research paper, Maan Barua writes, “Active engagement with the media is needed to produce a nuanced debate on conflict, for which recognising the role of different actors and working closely with individual journalists are vital.” This will also potentially help the public and policy makers make informed decisions, he says.
As per a report by the Times of India, some wildlife experts are of the opinion that Arikomban needs to be caught and kept in captivity, and if possible trained to become a kumki — an elephant that captures and tames wild elephants, or rescues trapped or injured elephants. The process to become a kumki, however, is said to be harrowing and intensive, with the elephants kept in kraals (enclosure) for long periods while they are systematically tamed. Around four years ago, the Tamil Nadu government had dropped its plan to turn the returning translocated elephant Chinnathambi into a kumki, after pressure mounted from outraged activists who pointed out the cruelty involved in the process, which allegedly includes thrashing and starvation.
The priority should be to handle the situation in a manner that does not negatively impact the people or Arikomban, says Supriya. “It may become necessary to tranquilise Arikomban if he strays into human habitations again, because it can otherwise lead to interactions that hurt humans and property, and even the tusker himself. We will have to keep pushing him back into the forest until he gets acclimatised to his new surroundings. Besides, veterinarians don’t think tranquilisers would cause any significant adverse impact on the elephant,” she adds.
The employment of location-specific strategies aside, only immense political will and coordinated efforts can pave the way to any long-term solution to human-elephant conflicts. Dedicated scientific research, large-scale restoration of elephant habitats, and the establishment of better corridor connectivity should all be in the offing.