Sahyadrica

Once young, wild, and free. Rama. After an introduction to the status of elephants in central India, focusing on the state of Chhattisgarh , I started collating available statistics to provide a summary of elephant populations, deaths due to man-made reasons, and human fatalities due to elephants, for the country. Much of this data was not actively provided by the Project Elephant, which it ideally should, but gleamed through from the Rajya Sabha Question and Answer session notes. The fact that questions on human-wildlife conflict resulting in animal and human deaths are frequently asked at India’s meeting of the council of states, shows that it is a pressing, political issue. Such information, collected through taxpayer money no less, should be available to the public without waiting for yearly sessions. The elephant in the room is a poster summarizing publicly-available information on wild elephants of India and human-wildlife interactions resulting in deaths. A high-resolution poste...

Elephants and Chhattisgarh: An Ongoing History The elephant population assessment report of India is due for over a year, and it is likely only next year that we will see the numbers. Much has happened since the last update in 2017: About 1,160 elephant died in the 2010 decade mostly due to human-related causes (500 in the last five years alone since the last report) [ 1 , 2 ] – that’s 4% of the 2017 population of elephants, at 27,306 for the country. On the other side of this equation, 4,000 people died in the last decade (1,500 people in the last three years alone) due to human-elephant conflict [ 3 , 4 ], and an estimated 10,000 sq km of crop fields are damaged by wild elephants every year [ 5 ]. Overall, over 100 elephants and 400-500 people die every year, making human-elephant interaction an important issue to address. The delay in the assessment report, therefore, is a matter of concern. Much of wild elephant boundaries have been redefined –   in Central India, from seven ...

A mother bear and her cubs foraging for termites one fine afternoon. As we huddled around the fire-stove, two big pots – one of daal and another bhaat – simmering with flavours and warmth, I held tightly a small cup of black coffee, eagerly waiting to ask a particular question to our cook who has been a part of the history of Guru Ghasidas National Park. It was cold and dark. There was a rustle of leaves and a crackle of breaking sticks as if something walked on the outer side of a thin wall that separated us from the dense forest. The question was about a Sloth Bear – bhaloo in the common tongue. In 2019, a bear fell in a well across from where we put up our base camp. Ropes and a ladder were put in for it to climb up, the story goes. Since this area is away from human settlements, spectators did not throng to the place of rescue, nor did it make into national news – the only reason it came into local news was that when the bear climbed out, instead of running into the forest, it ch...