Showing posts with label elephants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elephants. Show all posts

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Temple elephants

A pet peeve of mine.

"India must perhaps be the only country that has drafted so many acts and laws for animals yet enforces so few of them."

Gods in shackles  - The Hindu

Temple elephants in Kerala, and other parts of the country, have more to do with trade and tourismthan religion, says Rukmini Sekhar
dithyan, his forelimbs deliberately fractured, is permanently handicapped. Peethambaran spends his life chained in the open. Padmanabhan’s hind leg was deliberately broken. He now wobbles around, and is always chained. Keerthy is traumatised after being in isolation for a long time. Nandan, his hind feet bound to a stump and his front legs chained to a tree, has never been released for even an hour in 20 years. Devi has always been chained to one spot, at the entrance to the temple, for 35 years and has never moved freely. Mukundan’s hind legs are fractured… The list goes on.
This is the plight of the elephants of Guruvayur in Kerala, a temple town near Thrissur that attracts a sea of pilgrims round the year. Each of these animals has been destroyed in one way or another. Most of them just want to stand upright, have a drink of water, stretch their bruised and pus-filled legs, or simply walk freely.
Were the minders of these elephants aware of World Elephant Day that was observed on August 12 or that Ganesh Chaturthi was celebrated on September 17? No.
Recently, the British newspaper, the Daily Mail , published a stomach-churning article by journalist Liz Jones on the plight of these elephants (“The terrible plight of Indian elephants” — http://goo.gl/of9cTl) that drew criticism for what was seen as an example of sham journalism because she had patently not really witnessed the things she wrote about. But long before she wrote her piece, there have been reports by three official committees that investigated the abuse of elephants at Guruvayur.
The findings of the third committee, headed by Kerala’s poet-activist, Sugathakumari, were published in the report titled “Report on the Welfare and Veterinary Status — Captive Elephants at Punnathur Kotta, Guruvayur Devaswom Board Thrissur, Kerala”. Authorised by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) and conducted by Dr. Arun A. Sha of Wildlife SOS and Suparna Bakshi Ganguly of Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, it is field-based, scientific and empirical.
The investigation was carried out over three days, in August 2014, using field observations and a detailed examination of veterinary records. Ownership certificates, work registers, diet charts, interviews with staff and mahouts, records of offences, details of elephant donations and donors and even dung samples were all studied to evaluate the condition and the physiological and psychological profiles of the elephants.
The facts reveal a violation of several laws and guidelines such as The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, Project Elephant’s Guidelines for Care and Management of Captive Elephants 2008, the Central Zoo Authority of India’s guidelines called Zoos in India — Legislation, Policy, Guidelines and Strategy 2014, The Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act, 2002, the Performing Animals Rules 1973, and Kerala Captive Elephants (Management and Maintenance) Rules 2012. India must perhaps be the only country that has drafted so many acts and laws for animals yet enforces so few of them.
The report shows that all the elephants at the Punnathur Kotta sanctuary are chained with no exercise. Often, these chains cut into the skin or become embedded in the flesh and have to be surgically removed. The animals are in complete solitude for about 23 hours; some are chained by one hind and one fore leg, while for others it is the hind legs and one fore leg.
The animals stand for hours in slush, mud and dung which is tragic as elephants are mammals that roam freely over stretches of land in closely-knit herds. In Guruvayur, they are exposed to the elements throughout the year as there are only eight sheds available. Very often, they are tethered to the same spot, where they eat and defecate resulting in festering infections such as septicemia and foot rot apart from tuberculosis, lung infections and heart conditions. Many try to break free from their shackles and exhibit what is scientifically called “stereotyped behaviour”. There are no enrichments like allowing them access to water bodies, dust or mud baths.
The fact is that keeping temple elephants has little to do with religion and everything to do with trade and tourism. “Perhaps it may be easier to comprehend, although not condone, why these gentle giants are exploited in the name of culture and religion when you consider the significant revenue these elephants generate for the Guruvayur temple. It is also easier to understand why the Guruvayur Devaswom Board encourages the hiring and use of its elephants, and disregards stern warnings against such practices by the Government of India,” says Mr. V.K. Venkitachalam, Secretary of the Heritage Animal Task Force.
According to the AWBI report, between January 2014 and April 2014, out of a total of 120 festival days, 38 out of the 59 elephants were leased out. In the four-month span, 52-year-old elephant Gopikrishnan worked for 77 days. In the case of a celebrity elephant like the 74-year-old Padmanabhan, he was made to toil for 18-20 hours, earning up to Rs.7 lakh for the temple in a day, even though his retirement age is 65. The revenue that festival elephants generate annually adds up to Rs.3.7 crore. The revenue for 2014-15, including donations by devotees, sponsorships and elephant camps, is estimated to touch Rs.7 crore. The “work” the animals have to do includes being loaded and unloaded from trucks, chained in alien environments, exhibited to the public for up to 10 hours a day, being subject to stress and the noise of musical instruments, facing surging, chaotic crowds, submitting to the dreaded metallic bull-hook or ankush , being adorned with heavy coverings in the oppressive heat, and having to do with no proper food, water or shelter. Welfare is secondary to the elephant’s commitment to a festival schedule, often with no intervals for rest. “Cultural practices cannot be considered greater than the laws of the land, whereby the exploitation of India’s heritage animal is condoned,” adds the AWBI report.
The commonest excuse to keeping temple elephants in captivity is “tradition”. Any exposé on the condition of these elephants is considered an attack on Hinduism. “But, it is the opposite of Hinduism. There were no elephants at that temple before 1969, which is when Hindu families, experiencing hard times due to land reforms, donated their elephants because they could no longer care for them,” says Mr. Venkitachalam. “With the West Asian oil boom of the 1970s, when lots of Indians became rich, the act of donating a ‘sacred’ elephant became a status symbol. Using elephants in festivals only started in the mid-1970s. This is not ancient, this is new.”
The AWBI report is damning and places the responsibility squarely on the Dewaswom Board. “No institution, however prestigious and powerful, can hope to insulate itself when it is on the wrong side of public opinion on a long-standing issue of humane concern. In just a few short years, the Devaswom’s elephant-keeping model has lost its shine, seen its value downgraded, mishandled tragic incidents involving the brutal assault on the captive elephants, and its reputation being affected by swelling public scepticism of its elephant facility.”
What is required now is to permanently outlaw the practice of incarcerating elephants in temples in India. It is time to act, now.
Rukmini Sekhar is a writer and activist, committed to the protection of animals.



Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Elephant in the room

A lovely series illustrating the man-elephant "conflict".

Elephant in the room Key References: Goswami et al. (in press). Dynamic Occupancy Models Provide a Mechanistic Understanding of Human–Wildlife Conflict. Goswami, V. R., Sridhara, S., Medhi, K., Williams, A. C., Chellam, R., Nichols, J. D., Oli, M. K. (2014). Community-managed forests and wildlife-friendly agriculture play a subsidiary but not substitutive role to protected areas for the endangered Asian elephant. Biological Conservation, 177: 74-81. Goswami, V. R., Vasudev, D., Oli, M. K. (2014). The importance of conflict-induced mortality for conservation planning in areas of human–elephant co-occurrence. Biological Conservation, 176: 191-198. Kumar, M. A and Ganesh, R. (2012). Human-elephant coexistence: community involvement in conflict resolution in a land–use mosaic of the Anamalai hills, Western Ghats, India. NCF technical report No: 19, Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore. Kumar, M. A., Mudappa, D., Raman, T. R. S. (2010). Asian elephant Elephas maximus habitat use and ranging in fragmented rainforest and plantations in the Anamalai Hills, India. Tropical Conservation Science Vol. 3 (2)143-158.













Saturday, February 26, 2011

An escape story that ends sadly and badly

We saw the Top Slip elephants on our Pongal trip to Parambikulam. I asked if they were sad to be chained. I wonder which one of the magnificent elephants we saw was Kartik.

Elephant escapes from Top Slip camp, search on
TNN, Feb 24, 2011, 05.38am IST

COIMBATORE: A 35-year-old tusker has escaped from the elephant camp at Top Slip near Pollachi in Coimbatore district.

It slipped out of the camp on Monday night and is hiding in the bushes near Sethumadai, a little away from the reserve forest area. The tusker, Karthik is going through "must" and may have gone in search of a female companion, S Thangaraj, a forest ranger at Top Slip, told The Times of India.

Normally, the elephants at the training camp are not bound by chain at night. They're let loose in the forests. In the mornings, they return to the camp. "Elephants have never slipped out of the camp in the last decade," said Thangaraj.

The mahout and forest guards launched a massive search for the animal on Tuesday. They spotted him at a tribal settlement in Saralapathy near Sethumadai on Wednesday morning. When the mahout Murugan walked closer to the tusker, the animal ran deeper into the jungles. His female companion, Sivakami, and another tusker were brought in to lure him back into the camp. "But he is refusing to come out of the bushes," Thangaraj said.

By dusk, the "rescue operation" was called off. Now, forest officials are trying to trap Karthik with two other female elephants in the camp. "He relates well to our camp elephants Vijayalakshmi and Selvi. We hope Karthik will come back tomorrow," the official said.

Karthik was born in the Top Slip camp to Alamelu, who died a few years ago. When wild tuskers stray away from jungle, Karthik usually goes as a kumkhi elephant to drive them back. There are 20 elephants in the Top Slip camp.

Jumbo that escaped from camp gored to death by wild tusker
Radha Venkatesan | TNN, Feb 25th

Coimbatore: In a fierce territorial fight in the jungles, a male elephant which escaped from the elephant camp at Top Slip near Pollachi was gored by a wild tusker on Thursday morning. The 35-year-old camp elephant, Karthik, was found dead with multiple bleeding injuries at Saralapathy near Sethumadai, about 5 km from the scenic hill retreat of Top Slip.

“His body was covered with bleeding wounds. He was gored to death in a fierce fight with a large wild tusker,” Top Slip forest ranger, Thangaraj Paneerselvam told TOI.

Forest guards who had waited on the forest fringes to bring back the tusker to the camp, could hear loud trumpeting all through Wednesday night. Around 4am on Thursday, the trumpeting stopped.

“We knew Karthik was in trouble. But when we went into the jungles, it was too late,” Karthik’s mahout Murugan said. When a camp elephant strays into forests, it cannot co-exist with wild elephants. “A camp elephant is no match for a wild tusker. The tusker is fiercely territorial and will not allow camp elephants to invade his space,” the forest official said. Karthik was born in the elephant camp about 35 years ago and was a “kumkhi” elephant.

On Monday night, suffering from hormonal surges, he left the camp. Forest guards and mahouts launched a massive hunt in the jungles to locate him.

After a day-long search, they spotted him near a tribal settlement at Saralapatty. However, he refused to respond to the calls of his mahout. So, a female elephant, Sivakami, and another tusker from the Kozhikamudi camp were brought to lure him out of the jungles.

But Karthik stubbornly ignored the overtures of Sivakami and ran deeper into the jungles. On Wednesday evening, the forest personnel decided to bring two more female elephants to draw Karthik back to the camp. “Unfortunately, by this time, Karthik had succumbed in a terrain battle. The tusker which attacked him was also experiencing hormonal surges,” forest guards said.

Two years ago, two elephants in the camp fought a fierce battle and one of them died after suffering severe abdominal injuries. Last week, a tiger and a leopard died in a territorial fight in the Nilgiris forests.

radha.venkatesan@timesgroup.com

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Happy and free. Chained and sad?

As I saw the wonderful scenes of jubilation in Tahrir Square in Cairo, I once again appreciated my basic civil liberties. Would I rather live in chaotic, inefficient but democratic India, or controlled and advanced China? Would I enjoy being a princess in a gilded cage- like castle or an ordinary citizen free to roam the streets and markets of my land?

Similarly, would the elephants prefer the freedom of the forests to the luxuries of being fed and bathed (never mind the chains) of camp life? On our recent visit to Parambikulam, I saw elephants in the wild, and they were definitely smiling I tell you. And then, there were the sad eyes of the Top Slip elephant camp inmates.

I dont like zoos and I dont like elephants in camps. The worst off are the temple elephants. I saw a couple of temple elephantsa few months ago...and my heart just went in to my stomach on seeing their plight. Instead of praying, I silently asked for that magnificent creature's forgiveness.

It is no wonder that in their collective unconscious these animals are angry at us...

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Elephant - God or victim?

We celebrated Gowri and Ganesha hubba/pooja this morning, and as I listened to the mantras, my mind wandered (Sorry, but it did!), to elephants, wild ones, those magnificent large creatures with gentle eyes that for some reason always look so sad. Odd, isn't it, we have deified both motherhood and the elephant, and both are exploited and mistreated in Indian society?

While we talk a lot about the vanishing tiger, as a country we have failed the much loved elephant haven't we? These large creatures need space and food, and as we pressure them into a corner, there is an inevitable man-animal conflict. Nowadays, a fortnight doesn't go by without a report of either an elephant killed, or a man killed/injured by an elephant.

Man vs elephant - the conflict of civilization, indicates that deaths of both humans and elephants are on the rise in India. When I read some of the reports, one almost gets the sense that the elephants are angry and raging.

I would be an enraged elephant too, if I found I had nowhere to go, take my babies, no safe points to cross from one forest to another, wouldn't I?

And then Ravi Chellam writes in his article Beyond the Herd, that there are 3,500 elephants in captivity. And I see those temple elephants in shackles and everytime I do, I make a silent apology to it, wishing I could free it.......

Finally an Elephant Task Force has been set up by the Ministry of Evironment and Forests.


Beyond the herd
RAVICHELLAM Posted online: Mon Sep 06 2010, 03:34 hrs
One of the innovative recommendations of the recently submitted report of the Elephant Task Force (ETF), backed by the environment ministry, is to declare it India’s national heritage animal. The elephant is possibly the most appropriate species to be awarded this recognition. Elephants have a wide distribution across the country, living in diverse habitats ranging from the tall grasslands of the alluvial flood plains of the terai to montane grasslands, evergreen forests, and moist and dry deciduous forests of the Western Ghats. They are also a much-loved species, with very strong cultural and religious links with vast sections of our population. The elephant is one of the most recognised symbols of India, and unique in being among the few widely domesticated wild large mammals. They play very important roles in religious and cultural ceremonies across India. Three thousand and five hundred elephants are estimated to be in captivity in India, largely in temples and under private ownership.
India is home to more than 60 per cent of the remaining wild elephants in Asia, with an estimated population of around 26,000. So, as a country we have a crucial role to play for their long-term survival in the wild. While these numbers may seem high and indicate that the elephants are well conserved and secure, the field reality is actually very different.

Elephant habitats have been undergoing rapid change in the last couple of decades in India due to conversion to agriculture, development of infrastructure and other development projects including tourism resorts. Much of this change has had negative impacts on elephant populations due to fragmentation and degradation of their habitats. In many instances, elephant habitats have been totally brought under human use, resulting in the complete loss of the habitat. Poaching of elephants for their tusks has also been a problem in certain parts of India. In Asian elephants, only the males possess tusks and so poaching tends to be focused on males with disastrous consequences for the sex-ratio of the remaining elephant populations. Human-elephant conflicts (HEC) are widespread and according to the ETF, about one million hectares of crop lands are damaged by elephants annually. Every year in India, about 400 people are killed by elephants and in retaliation about 100 elephants are killed. This indicates how widespread and serious this conflict is in India today. The task force has recommended multiple approaches, some of which are very innovative and practical, in order to mitigate and manage this problem. The focus is on preventing human actions which will create fresh conflicts and to prevent and minimise existing levels of conflict. This includes integrated land use planning in and around elephant habitats, enhanced guarding of crops, higher levels of local community participation in these efforts and more efficient and just payment of compensation.

Another major and avoidable cause of elephant mortality is death on railway tracks due to collision with trains and electrocution from low-hanging high-tension wire. These problems have also been recognised in the ETF. It has identified 10 elephant landscapes where conservation would be prioritised. These landscapes include all 32 of the existing and proposed elephant reserves. Elephants are extremely mobile and social mega-herbivores and so they can only be conserved at the landscape level. These elephant landscapes contain several types of lands including protected areas, reserved forests and revenue land. Many of the protected areas are connected by vital corridors, which enable elephants to move from one part of their home range to the other and also ensure the genetic connectivity and integrity of the populations, which is vital for their long-term survival. The task force places emphasis on securing the corridors and elephant habitats beyond the protected areas for their long-term conservation.

The report supports a strong role for science in assessing and monitoring elephant populations and also in undertaking ecological and veterinary studies which will help us understand elephant populations and their behaviour in a better and more holistic manner. A clear role for civil society organisations and public participation in the conservation and management of elephants has also been outlined, with Rs 600 crore recommended as the financial outlay to implement the recommendations during the Twelfth Plan period.

Wildlife conservation in India is beginning to take a broader approach, after many decades of tightly focusing on tigers alone. Last year, the river dolphin was declared the national aquatic animal, Project Snow Leopard has been functional, there is a move to bring back the cheetah, and the latest heartening development is the spotlight on elephants. This indicates an increasingly mature approach to wildlife conservation, one which values nature in its myriad forms.

The writer is country director, Wildlife Conservation Society-India Programme


He is also an MNS member.

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