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A comparative study shows that when 408 captive elephants had died in Kerala since 2009, only 368 wild elephants were killed in the forests of Kerala during this period.
The statistics also shed light into the cruel side of the ‘multi-crore jumbo trade’ when the figures are compared with the elephant population in the forests and the rest in the state. According to the wildlife census, 2012, there are 6,177 wild elephants in Kerala, whereas there are only less than 1,000-odd captive elephants, both legally and illegally, in the state, of which as many as 408 were killed in the festival venues of the state in the last six years.
According to the statistics available with the state Forest Department, as many as 368 jumbos were killed during 2009-2015 and 88 human beings have also lost their lives as result of man-animal conflict during this period.
According to the statistics available with the Heritage Animal Task Force (HATF), an NGO working for elephant welfare, as many as 408 captive elephants were killed in the state during the same period and around 205 people were trampled to death by raging elephants during this period mainly in the festival venues and there was around 150 per cent rise in the deaths of humans when compared to the forest causalities.
However, there is a drastic rise in the number of wild elephants killed in the forests of Kerala during 2014-15 with as many as 96 elephants dying this year alone as per the forest statistics, whereas there were only 7 captive elephant deaths in 2005 and it was 24 in 2004, said V K Venkitachalam, secretary of the task force.
The figures also show that while as many as 20 people were killed in the forest fringes of the state in last fiscal, there were only 11 people killed by the captive elephants in 2015 and nine people in 2014.
This also points out that in the recent times especially in the last two years the forest became a treacherous terrain both for elephants and human beings who venture into the forests or live close to the forests, while the festival venues turned to be comparatively a safer place than the forest following the intervention of animal right activists and various law enforcement agencies.
Dr E A Jayson, Wildlife Biology scientist of KFRI, said the state has to adopt a multi-pronged strategy to reduce the rising man-animal conflict incidents in Kerala.
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