Trunk Call – Elephant conservation is needed much closer home than you think
- Prama Neeraja Ayala
- Feb 21, 2014
- 2 min read
“Train elephants just like we’d handle children – with care, affection and the right incentives,” says Dr. Dag Goering, vet, photographer and elephant conservationist.
Close your eyes and think of a memory with the gentle giant that roams our lands – the elephant. Try and remember the movement those elephants made, the emotion you noticed in their eyes.
Was your earliest memory that of an elephant at a temple? Is it playing with a baby elephant that swung from side to side, repeating the same motion over and over again? At least, this is what my memory points to, and I found the baby elephant’s repeating motions very endearing. But here is what I missed: there is nothing endearing about a baby elephant repeating its motions, or an old matriarch blessing human beings. We are a country that loves our elephants, but have no idea how much cruelty they are put through in captivity.
“Not all elephants are subjected to harsh training but most of them do go through cruel methods like physical and psychological torture – they are deprived of sleep, tied up with ropes in strong large cages. Nails, sticks are used in many regions to tame an elephant. As a result of such taming, elephants become mentally unstable and tend to repeat a particular motion,” says Goering, at a photography exhibition that the couple held in Bangalore to talk about elephant conservation. He added that there are more humane modes of modern training that are possible today – called protected contact or non-dominance using rewards. Even the mahouts in many parts of India welcome such training.
Prof. Raman Sukumar, an eminent scientist and Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences talked about the constant man-animal conflict that is highly pronounced in the case of elephants. Dr. Sukumar, firstly, taking right out of Dag’s talk, mentioned few instances of atrocities that are committed in India to elephants by using their services for temple festival like in Kerala where young male elephants are used, separating them from their herd with no access to female elephants to mate. Dr. Sukumar stated that current conservation is really the “Ivory tower approach to conservation”. He added, “Elephants have been migrating all around South India, but it only causes concern when elephants come near Mysore or Bangalore. But when elephants have been causing havoc across smaller villages with number of human beings killed about 450 in last one year, the voices seemed to have reached deaf ears. In order for conservation of elephant to succeed, you need a holistic approach.”
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