Unabated human interference in the form of mining, farming, industries, and urbanisation in Odisha’s elephant landscape has virtually ravaged the traditional habitat corridors of heritage animals, bringing them into frequent conflict with humans.
Man-made obstacles like irrigation canals, railway lines, and highways meandering through their habitats and traditional migratory paths are hindering the giant animals’ migration and movement for food. All these factors have contributed to the straying of elephants to places of human habitation, triggering man-elephant conflict, pointed out Biswajit Mohanty, a conservationist.
Humans getting killed due to elephant attacks and fatalities of pachyderms are occurring in the State at an alarming frequency, as measures to arrest the trend are found wanting, he alleged.
Odisha elephants were prized as war elephants since ancient times, from the Mahabharata to the Mughal era; even exported to South East Asia. However, the state has now turned into a gruesome graveyard for pachyderms for 10 years, he charged.
The State is currently home to 2,098 elephants as per the latest census of these animals, while in 1979, there were 2,044 elephants, mostly confined to rich forested districts like Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Angul, Sundargarh, and Cuttack.
However, the elephant population has become stagnant, though the elephants have scattered across 24 districts. The elephants, originally from neighbouring Jharkhand and West Bengal, migrate to Odisha. In the process, they also get counted as the State’s elephants during the census.
Keonjhar division, which was once a rich and safe habitat, has lost most of its elephants to large-scale mining, with many migrating outside forever, while Dhenkanal district, which had 81 elephants in 2002, had as many as 239 in 2024, he said.
At present, Dhenkanal is a hotbed of conflict as elephants are driven away relentlessly while the local youth chase and harass them. The highly stressed and angry elephants retaliate and kill humans. The tolerance from both sides is on the edge, with angry farmers refusing to tolerate huge crops and human lives anymore. They regularly charge wire fences with mainline power to save crops, thereby killing them, he pointed out.
Hindol Range of Dhenkanal witnesses more human-elephant conflict than any other landscape in India. A web of crude solar-powered fences, numerous live wire poaching contraptions, live wire crop fences, dangerously deep stone quarry pits, and night-long blasting has turned the area into a veritable death trap.
Besides, Angul is turning into the world’s largest colliery, leaving little space for the elephants. In 2023, 15 people were killed in the Bantala Range alone, while six elephants were electrocuted in the last three years. These elephants were driven out of Chhendipada and Talcher due to vast coal mine pits amidst prime elephant habitat.
Furthermore, 60 60-odd elephants of Chandaka sanctuary near Bhubaneswar, disturbed by development activities around the sanctuary, have migrated to the Ganjam and Cuttack area years ago. A group of 15 to 16 elephants from Chandaka, which stayed put in Ganjam’s Rambha area for about 4 to 5 years, has been completely wiped out by electrocutions, road accidents, and train kills.
Another group of 15-16 elephants was holed up in Ganjam’s Khallikote range, but their number has halved now. Some Chandaka elephants entered the Puri district, where they had never been seen in the past, resulting in severe conflict, in which several lives have been lost on both sides. A larger group of 25 Chandaka elephants, which migrated to the Cuttack district, has now reduced to less than 20 and moves around in small patches of forests in Athagarh and Khuntuni ranges. A large, extended elephant family of nearly 60 is now reduced to only about 35 animals; the herd is now broken up into smaller, isolated groups, which have no future.
Alleging that there is a near collapse in elephant protection due to zero accountability of forest officers, Mohanty said only guards and foresters are suspended for a few months and then reinstated.
“Not a single forest office has been dismissed from service for miserable failure to save elephants. Unless there is fixing of accountability from top level downward; unless the Forest Minister reviews protection every month and involves independent conservationists, Odisha will continue to earn the dubious distinction of being India’s elephant graveyard”, he charged.