Escalating Human-Elephant Conflict in Odisha with 57 Kills in First Quarter

Bhubaneswar: The first quarter of each fiscal year – April, May and June - happens to be the period when human elephant encounters are at its peak. Most human kills happen during this quarter.

Odisha has reported as many 57 human kills this quarter. The kills included 14 in mango orchards, 3 in cashew plantations, 7 when people went out to relieve themselves, 7 during village raids, 3 during crop raids, and, 8 when people ventured into forests to collect firewood, kendu and sal leaves, mahua fruits and mushrooms.

Among the most conflict prone elephant bearing districts, Dhenkanal witnessed 14 human kills, followed by Angul (13), Keonjhar (8), Mayurbhanj (5) , Sambalpur (5), Sundargarh (2) , and Cuttack (2). Of the 13 human kills in Angul district, villagers in Bantala Forest range faced the wrath of the Elephants the most in the three months recording 12 encounters in which 9 were killed and 5 were injured. Apparently, Elephants from the Satkosia sanctuary which borders the range have begun to spend more and more time outside their habitat.  

According to wildlife expert Dr Biswajit Mohanty, apart from farm land and village raids by elephants which happen all through the year, the first quarter of every fiscal encounters go up sharply as humans and elephants vie for the same fruits like mango, bael and jackfruit which ripen around human habitation and inside forests too.

The April, May, June quarter of this year, compared to the last 9 years,  has seen a 26 per cent rise in the number of human elephant encounters which resulted in more human kills and injuries than ever before - a rise of 50 per cent above the previous highest human kills of last year.

The sharp rise suggests that this year the number of human kills could end up significantly more than 146 human kills of last year. Incidentally, this quarter also happens to have recorded the highest ever Human Kills in any quarter in the last ten years.

“The figures also show that in each of the last four years, the human kills have consistently crossed triple figure busting the government’s claim that they are engaging and investing in more resources to control human elephant conflict. Despite crores of rupees paid to outside state consultants by the forest department during the last seven years for mitigation of conflict there is zero improvement,” said Dr Mohanty.

The escalating figures each year also indicate that elephants are venturing out of their habitats more often due to huge levels of disturbance caused by quarries and crushers and night movement of trucks and tractors.

“There is also a lack of adequate forest fodder and a marked shift towards consumption of farm crops  and food grains stored inside villages. Palm fruits which are their prime source of food during June and July have become scarce due to massive felling of palm trees for interstate trade to Tamil Nadu. Dhenkanal, Angul, Deogarh districts have lost thousands of palm trees since the last three years as organized timber traders camp there and decimate the trees,” added the wildlife expert.

Dhenkanal has recorded a ten-fold jump in diversion of elephant habitat for black and laterite stone quarries, stone crushers and steel/power plants between 2011 and 2021. Such quarries should be shut down to address the raging conflict but the state wildlife wing has failed to take any action, stated Dr Mohanty.

Odisha has the dubious record of more number of human kills among all other states despite an elephant population of 1976 compared to Karnataka which has 6,049, Assam (5,719), Kerala  (3,054), and Tamil Nadu  (2,761) as per the last national level census carried out in August,2017.