Mari Marcel Thekaekara, New Internationalist, November 5, 2013 | Read the full blog here >>
[…] Living as we do on the edge of the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary, we hear many elephant stories, not all pretty. Our much-maligned forest department gets a lot of flack from animal rights activists for catching and taming rogue elephants. All of us who live here love our pachyderms, even the rogue ones. But it’s one thing to be an armchair activist and another to be confronted by the reality of elephants who’ve killed hapless local residents.
What can the forest department officials do? […]
A poor farmer’s entire income can disappear in one single night if the jumbos come a-partying. So capturing the herd and relocating them is not the solution, apparently.
Taming the huge elephants is a skill but the breaking-in process, which lasts a week, is a tough and cruel one. The animal has to be broken into submission. It is first tied to a wooden frame or between two tree trunks. Here, it is rendered totally immobile. At this stage, while it is desperately wrenching at the ropes and chains, flailing violently though impotently with its trunk, it is introduced to its mahout (elephant keeper). To break her in, the young elephant is struck with an elephant hook and beaten repeatedly. At the same time, the mahout talks to her in a calming voice.
Fear, pain, thirst and hunger finally break her, forcing her to give up all resistance. She is then surrounded by tame elephants who teach her to become a beast of burden – a working elephant. I’ve watched adivasi mahouts who never beat their elephant but talk to him or her all the time. The breaking-in is another process, a pretty nasty story. More and more elephants are turning rogue or destructive. So we need solutions like PAWS for them in areas where human-animal conflict abounds.
One solution is for animal lovers to buy up huge tracts of land and convert them to sanctuaries for brutalized animals. […]
Source: Elephants in conflict with nearby communities face a cruel future — New Internationalist
Address : http://newint.org/blog/2013/11/05/elephants-conflict-local-communities/
Date Visited: Wed Nov 06 2013 15:34:00 GMT+0100 (CET)
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