On Independence Day this year, a herd of six elephants, including two calves, found themselves trapped in a nightmare. The animals were surrounded by a heavily armed mob as they tried to return to a nearby reserve forest in West Bengal’s Jhargram.
As the animals sought refuge, a member of the hula party—a group often tasked with driving elephants away from residential areas—attacked one of the female elephants with a burning spear, causing her to bellow in agony and rendering her unable to move her hind legs.
As the injured elephant struggled to rejoin them, the herd watched helplessly. Medical assistance arrived a staggering eight hours after the incident. The wounded elephant succumbed to her injuries the following day. It is impossible to imagine the emotional and psychological impact on the surviving herd members, given the fact that elephants are considered to be among the most intelligent animals. But there is something important we can do in the aftermath of this tragic incident.
The injuring and killing of a species listed under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 in broad daylight sets a dangerous precedent for wildlife conservation and public perception of these animals. This disturbing cruelty demonstrates the urgent need to proactively manage human-elephant interactions. It demands not just policy reform on paper, but immediate and tangible action in the daily lives of people living in close quarters with elephants. All too often, such incidents receive brief media coverage, only to fade from the public consciousness within days. There’s rarely any follow-up regarding measures to prevent future tragedies. While elephants may hold a revered place in Indian culture, the reality for these magnificent creatures across the country is far from venerable.
The bigger picture
A broader policy gap underlies this incident and makes Jhargram a human-elephant conflict hotspot. Jhargram is located within the larger area of an elephant corridor that spans parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Odisha. These corridors are crucial for the movement of elephants between different forested areas and also happen to be within the Mayurjharna Elephant Reserve. However, both elephant reserves and elephant corridors have no legal sanctity and are merely token instruments not recognised under any law. This makes the diversion of land for mining, transmission lines, railway lines, irrigation canals, and roads easier and devoid of any safeguards afforded to legally protected areas under the Wildlife (Protection) Act.
Increasingly, elephant migration routes in and around South Bengal (north Similipal and Tapoban) are severely fragmented by mining and agricultural activities compounded by barricades and concrete irrigation canals built along the borders of Odisha. The standard of protection in an elephant reserve or corridor is negligible. Therefore, developmental projects are not mandated to pay heed to the ecology of elephants. They sever traditional migratory routes that not only isolate elephant populations but also force them closer to human settlements, escalating human-elephant conflicts. Moreover, this authorised disregard for the ecological integrity of elephant habitats undermines conservation efforts and poses long-term risks to the species and ecosystems they help sustain and to communities.
Through the years, many disturbing videos have emerged from Jhargram showing hula parties driving away elephants and often using very violent means. Despite burgeoning human-wildlife coexistence challenges in the area, the management of elephants is outsourced by the state forest department to hula parties comprising local youth with flaming torches and spears, who are ill-equipped to manage a herd of elephants.
This first line of response for tackling conflict is untrained and often lacks supervision by the forest department, which can lead to escalation of conflict situations and provoke aggressive reactions from the elephants. This poses a danger to both human and elephant lives, with casualties occurring on both sides.
More pointedly, the entire operation is illegal and in violation of the Supreme Court order from 2018 that outlawed the use of fireballs or burning spears. The top court also recommended that flaming torches be used sparingly, with the forest department leading the effort, stating: “As an emergency measure, under the direct control of the Forest Department, mashaals may be used for the time being only to avoid any deaths and crop damage that may take place and ensure the proper movement of elephants in the corridors. The mashaals [may] be used only in an emergency.” Unfortunately, local mobs are often allowed to take control of the situation.
Over the years, there has been ample documentation of hula parties being routinely used in South Bengal and the practice has also been challenged in the Supreme Court. However, since this recent incident, the West Bengal Forest Department has shifted all responsibility onto the “locals”, who, ironically, are employed by the department itself.
While community engagement is essential for conflict management, it’s both unwise and unjust to place the full burden on communities to handle elephants directly. Instead, these hula parties can be leveraged to monitor elephants, gather qualitative data on individual animals, keep the community informed about their presence, and function as early warning systems.
Also read: ‘Belur Makhna’ leads Kerala forest dept on wild elephant chase as human-animal conflict intensifies
Navigating forward
Human-elephant conflict is currently marred by perfunctory policies and volumes of unimplementable management guidelines that fail to translate into meaningful change in standardising operations on the ground. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the critical need for adaptive wildlife management solutions. Successful mitigation of human-elephant conflict requires collaborative efforts across multiple departments. While the forest department typically focuses on the animals alone, the police, district administration, and experienced local volunteers need to play crucial roles in crowd control as well.
Elephants navigating human-dominated landscapes are constantly seeking safe passage. Providing them with the opportunity to find sanctuary is the foundation of successful coexistence, which needs to be holistic, and solidly based on science and evidence. It must rest on the pillars of long-term population monitoring of elephants, proactive conflict mitigation measures by forest departments as opposed to reactive ones, solutions based on rewarding tolerance where it exists, fairly compensating for the loss of livelihoods, and implementing adaptive and inclusive policies in shared spaces.
Shubhra Sotie is Wildlife Research and Policy Specialist and Anisha Iyer is Coordinator, Human Wildlife Coexistence, at Humane Society International/India. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)