Coimbatore: On a narrow thorny path towards Thadagam Reserve Forest close to Coimbatore’s Poochiyur village, there is a small fresh mound that villagers call Rajava podhaitch edam, the place where Raja has been buried.
On 25 March, the wild male elephant was electrocuted to death, the fifth in Tamil Nadu in a span of 20 days.
And while there is an outpouring of grief for Raja, there is also a competing statistic—that of villagers trampled by elephants. This year, five people have been killed in the Coimbatore forest division alone.
In this deadly human-animal conflict over shrinking spaces, forests and expanding villages is a policy conundrum for India’s conservation officials. The crisscrossing policies of development, land rights of forest dwellers, and inviolate elephant corridors are all at odds with each other. Nilgiri, Krishnagiri, Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Erode, Tirupur, Dindigul are where the conflict plays out with depressing regularity.
On 7 March, around 240 km from Poochiyur in Kali Kavindar Kottai, Dharmapuri district, a herd of elephants encountered an electric fence that a farmer had put up to prevent wild boars from wreaking havoc on his farm. Three elephants died. Barely 10 days later, on 18 March, a wild elephant being chased away from Kelavalli village by forest department staff died when it touched a live wire. The incident was caught on camera.
Data from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change since 2019 shows that 29 elephant deaths have taken place due to electrocution in Tamil Nadu. During the same period, 152 humans have been killed in the state due to elephant attacks.
With settlements pressing into the forest, elephants are now frequent visitors foraging for food and water. The pachyderms may be deified, but with up close and personal encounters, Poochiyur’s residents are struggling with synchronous feelings of deep reverence and abject fear.
One elephant knocked on M Rajamani’s door in the dead of the night three years ago. Roused from her sleep, she opened the door to find the gigantic animal standing outside.
“I cried, ‘Kadavule baghwane Vigneshwara (God Vigneshwara, a name for the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha) please protect me and I fell unconscious,” said 49-year-old Rajamani who is a daily wage worker from Anaikatti region, 30 km from Poochiyur village.
Rajamani survived the encounter, but her brother wasn’t so fortunate. He died in March this year following an encounter with an elephant.
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Expanding farmlands, government vigil
It was the village priest who found Raja’s body. The elephant had been electrocuted close to the last house along the border of Poochiyur village in the foothills of the hilly Thadagam reserve forest. An electric pole fell on him. A forest official told ThePrint that the pole may have fallen when the elephant tried to “scratch itself” on it.
Every time an elephant is electrocuted, the government ups its vigil.
Three days after Raja’s death, Supriya Sahu, additional chief secretary with the Tamil Nadu government’s Environment, Climate Change and Forests department shared videos on social media showing forest officials on patrol.
Team #TNForest at Coimbatore is regularly patrolling forest fringe areas with sniffer dogs squad checking for traps,snares, illegal fences and country weapons etc. as a part of their important duties. All other Forest divisions too are on continous patrols checking violations pic.twitter.com/MAZNWeRzBi
— Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) March 28, 2023
“We have been working with District Collectors and TANGEDCO…officials to ensure that door to door checks are done, habitual offenders are monitored, revenue officers are involved in perambulation and in finding out illegal (electric) connectionism,” she wrote in another tweet.
These measures, however, are not always popular with farmers trying to protect their crop.
For elephants, the bounty from farms is an irresistible feast. Farmers near the forest areas prevent animal intrusion on their lands by either creating cavities, digging the ground, or by using electric fencing.
According to a senior officer from Anamalai Tiger Reserve, elephant sightings in villages started in 2005-06, as the animals began to move out of their shrinking forest areas. But it’s becoming worse every year as farmlands expand.
“There are many farmlands around reserve forest areas. People are purchasing land rights till the foothill of the forest. They’ve started irrigation and cultivation of crops like coconuts, bananas, etc and this has started attracting elephants out of the forest area,” said the officer who did not want to be identified.
In an attempt to pacify villagers while protecting wildlife, the Tamil Nadu government allows farmers to install electric fences that emit direct current. “This only gives a small shock, enough as a warning to the animal without causing any major harm,” said the forest official, adding that anything more can kill a human being as well. But environmentalists allege there is no monitoring system in place.
“There is only a reaction to a death, no proactive regulatory mechanism in place. Cases are registered against violators only after an animal dies,” said K Mohan Raj, a Coimbatore-based environmentalist.
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Fear and anger
Over an hour away from Coimbatore city, in the picturesque hills of Anaikatti, which translates to ‘a group of elephants’, there are multiple signboards reminding tourists to respect the wild animals that call the hills their home. “Elephants have right of way, do not obstruct,” reads one dusty signboard. Another simply instructs people to not “disturb wild animals”.
But they don’t stop the tragedies from unfolding. 67-year-old M Marudhachalam did not ‘disturb’ a wild animal. On 2 March, around 7 am, he went to a small stream near his house to relieve himself.
“My father was found trampled by an elephant from a herd of three that had come near the stream,” said his 35-year-old son M Pattiswaran, his grief raw and deep.
The Tamil Nadu government gave Pattiswaran’s family Rs 50,000 to perform the last rites, and promised another Rs 4.5 lakh as compensation.
According to the official from the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, in 2022, compensation worth Rs 2 crore was given to over 200 farmers for crop damage caused by marauding elephants and other wild animals.
For Pattiswaran, compensation is important, but he hopes the recent incidents are a wake-up call for forest officials to ensure stricter monitoring.
“We only hope now that this was the last death here due to an elephant attack.”
The day Marudhachalam died, another farmer, P Mahesh Kumar, who lived five kilometres away, was also killed by an elephant on his farm. “Farmers feel they are not adequately compensated for the loss that they suffer from animal entry,” said Mohan.
If Poochiyur’s villagers oscillate between fear and awe, then here, in Anaikatti, anger is the dominant emotion.
“Earlier only crops used to be destroyed, but now they are destroying homes and killing people too. We live a stressful life and more than 80 percent of farmers in this region are below the poverty line,” said M Mahalakshmi, president of the women’s wing of Tamil Nadu Farmers Association. Members are demanding that the government take up their cause and be more proactive with initiatives to help them.
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Mining toll on both sides
The unrelenting march towards urbanisation has made this conflict all the more urgent. The toll is high on both sides.
“Due to urbanisation we keep moving towards the forest areas, which are not growing. Land that was earlier used by animals has now become restricted due to farming or mining activities,” said Mohan.
And farming isn’t the only threat. Naickenpalayam in the foothills of Coimbatore’s Kattanchi mountain is scarred by illegal mining activities. Huge craters were carved out of the red sand. The cratered land lies barren, devoid of water or vegetation. This went on for 15 years until the Madras High Court intervened in 2021, but by then it was too late, say local residents.
As the red sand was mined for bricks and kilns, elephants from the hilly forest region started entering villages in search of food.
“The effects of the senseless digging have left the farmers and wildlife at risk,” said S. Ganesh of Thadagam Valley Protection Committee. While large-scale mining operations have stopped, Ganesh alleges that people are still illegally digging red sand and river sand up to a depth of almost 50 to 100 ft in many places.
“There are close to 120 electrical line poles that supply power to 22 mountain villages and agricultural areas. They are in vulnerable condition as they (brick kiln miners) dug the sand close to the electrical pole installations affecting proper electricity supplies. Now, these electrical poles are in a state of risk as they may fall down due to wind and other landslides,” said Ganesh.
It was an unstable electricity pole that toppled and killed Raja. Villagers gave him the name Raja, the king, because it is a common respectful way to address elephants in the forest region.
They gave him a tearful tribute after his postmortem, showering him with flowers and garlands before burying him.
The residents of Poochiyur village mourn Raja’s death fearing that the next encounter with a king may cost one of them their life.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)