Neighing horses to scare away wild elephants in Assam

Neighing horses to scare away wild elephants in Assam
Syed Zarir Hussain, Indo-Asian News Service
September 26, 2006
Guwahati, Sep 26

Wildlife authorities in India's northeastern state of Assam will soon play recorded sounds of horses neighing to scare away hungry wild Asiatic elephants currently locked in deadly turf wars with humans.

'We shall be recording the sound of horses neighing and then play the same over loudspeakers in areas where elephant depredation is very serious in an attempt to scare away the pachyderms,' Assam's chief wildlife warden M.C. Malakar told IANS on Tuesday. This was among other measures devised at an emergency meeting of experts, officials, elephant owners, and locals that concluded Monday at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam to ease the alarming man-elephant conflict in the region.

'The idea to chase wild elephant herds using horses whinny was given at the meeting by a village elder and we decided to implement his suggestion on an experimental basis,' Assam forest and wildlife minister Rockybul Hussain said. Elephants have killed 239 people in Assam in the past five years, while 265 elephants have died during the same period, many of them victims of retaliation by angry humans, said a wildlife department report.

The meeting also decided to seek permission from the environment and forests ministry to allow locals to capture wild elephants to minimise the conflict. 'We shall appeal to the central government to allow capturing of elephant calves as there is a growing demand from the affected people and experts who endorse such a move,' the wildlife warden said.

Capturing wild elephants has been an age-old tradition in Assam where trained decoy elephants are used to noose a wild calf. The practice was stopped in 1995 with the central ministry banning the tradition. 'We have also decided to erect power fences in and around vast croplands to keep elephant herds at bay although we cannot do the same in migratory routes,' the minister said. The meeting also decided to launch a massive awareness campaign to relocate elephant habitats and evict people settled illegally in forest areas. ' Shrinking forests and encroachment on elephant territory by people have forced the animals to stray from their habitats into human settlements in the quest of food,' Malakar said.

Satellite imagery shows around 2,000 villagers encroached on some 280,000 hectares (691,880 acres) of thick forest in Assam, authorities say. The attitude of people toward the elephants has become less tolerant as the pachyderms have become an increasing problem for villagers, officials say. Villagers often poison the marauding elephants while in the past they drove them away by beating drums or bursting firecrackers.

In recent months, herds of wild elephants have been wreaking havoc in several parts of Assam after straying into settlements and drinking the liquor brewed from fermented rice by villagers. Assam has India's largest population of Asiatic elephants, estimated at around 5,300, according to a wildlife census in 2002.

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