What Asian elephants taught me about people | Opinion
Lara Lebleu on her experience of Asian elephant conservation problematics in South India.
We hear and read about the world, but fortunate are those of us who actually experience it. This was my first thought when I walked into the main hut of the A Rocha field station in Bannerghatta National Park in India, which works for the conservation of resident Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in the park. I was a student, brimming with curiosity about wildlife. Brought up in a city, I knew much about the species around me and yet hadn’t even begun to approach them and their environment. What better way to set off on my journey into science than to spend time in an elephant sanctuary? This first step proved more educational than I had ever expected.
Image: Lara Lebleu
As a student at an international school in another part of India, I had spent two years hearing about Asian elephants, not only as a glamourous local species but also a symbol of the key Hindu god Ganesha. I had watched them on screens, read about them in books and longed to hear the breaking of branches announcing their presence nearby. A Rocha India could afford me that very opportunity, as a field station working in a National Park in South India for the conservation of resident elephant populations which they monitored closely. I excitedly set camera traps to see the wildlife coming by our camp at night and searched for traces of its passage in the morning.
As I happily worked my way day after day in the blazing dry season sun, I kept thinking: “How lucky the locals are to live here and be able to gaze at such animals!”. But in the midst of my excitement, I could not help but feel a slight tension in the air. Like a spider web hovering above our heads, only seen in the light of the evening sun, I sensed it was there. All worked diligently and with passion, but I noticed some frowning now and then. That was an unexpected sight in what, to me, seemed to be a dream job. I asked, and the answer I got shed a whole new light on my experience in this unique place. What I had yet to understand was that there are other local residents that needed to be added into the equation.
Image: Lara Lebleu
The National Park, which was declared official in 1974, is set near Bangalore in the state of Karnakata and has been gradually compressed by rising human density, a phenomenon threatening many if not most protected areas in India. As urbanization sprawls its way into wild habitats, it pushes animals into smaller and often inadequate territories. The land around the National Park is largely agricultural, providing food and income to families who would otherwise have none. They cherish that land, which generations of their people have worked, and by all accounts consider it their own. However, elephants trample and eat their way through crops and orchards in search of water or shelter. With the love of the land comes the urge to protect it, and thus locals turn to violent means to push the pachyderms away, threatening wild populations which are already at risk.
The frowns I had noticed were the result of this conundrum. The work of the people in the station was not only to monitor the elephant population in the park, but also to find a way to reconcile both parties. How to stop elephants from reaching lands which were not theirs and teach local communities the vital importance of an animal they so often referred to as a nuisance? Elephants are a keystone species, meaning that they have an enormous ecological impact that other organisms in the ecosystem are contingent on. These farming families, so dependent on the health of their land and water, are among those species.
I learned through my experience of the work done in this sanctuary and of subsequent field work, that ownership of the land can been approached differently. In fact, it should be. For these few weeks, it wasn’t a textbook world I was living in anymore, but a colorful one painted by the everyday struggle of communities which want nothing more than to live well and sustainably. The A Rocha biologists-turned-diplomats strive to better the lives of the animals they so cherish, and of the farming families they live beside. The bridge between the two has so far been built from an unsustainable standpoint and turns out to be lopsided and detrimental to one of the two parties. Every effort made by the local communities and the zoologists working in the field station represents another step taken towards building a stronger bridge, one which will last without eroding because we overuse biotic resources and push species to extinction.
We are dependent on the products of the environment we live in so why should we settle for second best, leaving the ecology of our homes to one side, as if it were only ornamental in our lives? From a conservation biology standpoint, we shouldn’t. Added to this human experience, I learned about Ecological Awareness, the understanding of living organisms and their relationship to their environment and each other, including human beings. This gave me purpose, setting me on a path of research in order to find real life solutions to real life problems. And every time I walk surrounded by great trees, mountains or sandy beaches, I remember that, for a short time, I am part of this place and ask myself: “How can I leave it better than I found it, if only to benefit its smallest token of life?”.