One-third of the people killed by elephants in north Bengal between 2006 and 2016 happened to be drunk and chasing the animal, a study has found.
During this period, a total of 476 persons died and 1646 injured in elephant attacks in the four districts of the region: Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, and Cooch Behar.
The study was published earlier this year in science journal Plos One . It analysed the age, profession and identity of the victims and found that 36% were drunk (on local rice beer called handia ) and were chasing away elephants from their fields or the vicinity of their homes.
The study also suggested that awareness campaigns about the dangers of alcohol and basic behaviour of elephants should be organised regularly to educate marginalised farmers and tea estate workers.
Titled Assessment and prediction of spatial patterns of human-elephant conflicts in changing land cover scenarios of a human-dominated landscape in north Bengal , the paper looks at seasonal and temporal variation of elephant attacks, major land uses, hotspots of conflicts and age, profession and activity/behaviour of victims.
“74% of the elephant attack victims were males. 30% were farmers, 19% were daily labours and 17% were tea workers. Among the victims, 20% were returning home in dark, 7% had gone to collect firewood and 8% were defecating in the open,” said Dipanjan Naha and S. Sathyakumar, the lead authors of the publication who are associated with the Wildlife Institute of India. Only in 8% of the cases were the victims sleeping inside their homes, their study found.
A high seasonal variation has been observed in terms of attacks, according to the study, which is based on field visits to conflict sites. As many as 54 % of elephant attacks occurred between May and July and 30 % between August and October. The frequency of the conflict increases during the rainy season, which also coincides with the harvest of major agricultural crops such as wheat, maize and paddy.
The study also found major changes in land-use pattern in the region: forest cover increased by 446 sq km, the area under agriculture reduced by 128 sq km, while tea gardens declined by 307 sq km. The area under human settlement increased by 61 sq km in the past 10 years.
The researchers also pointed out that elephants need access to water and thus encroachment of riverine patches should be regulated immediately. The experts emphasised that the increase in area of human settlements should also be regulated, particularly along major elephant corridors such as Jaldapara, Buxa, Gorumara and Mahananda sanctuaries.
The study also pointed that the estimated elephant population in north Bengal is 488, which is only 1.8 % of the elephant population of India, but the number of human deaths due to elephant attacks stood at 12 % of all such deaths in the country.
Suggestions from the researchers include discouraging of paddy cultivation in areas adjacent to protected areas, where the risk of human-elephant conflict is the highest. Unpalatable crops such as ginger, chillis, tamarind, etc. should be grown to discourage visitation by elephants, they said.
