Wildlife management: a case study
KUMARAN SATHASIVAM
ROMANCING THE ELEPHANT — A Strategy to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict (A Study): C.H. Basappanavar and K.M. Kaveriappa; Vanasuma Prakashana, 1423/2, 2nd Main, ‘B’ Block, Sahakarnagar, Bengaluru-560092. Rs. 750.
When man colonised different lands around the world, he found a remarkable diversity of animal life flourishing in them. The newcomers were hunters, concentrating on the large mammals and flightless birds among these, driving them out of existence. North America, for instance, teemed with a great variety of large mammals including sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths around 12,000 years ago. The next 1000 years, the period in which humans first spread across the New World, wi
tnessed a collapse of this diversity. Among the animals that went extinct were three species of mammoth, which had thrived for two million years up to then. Similar dramas were acted out in Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar.
Today the Indian elephant, one of the largest land animals in existence, feels the heavy hand of man. With its historical habitat mostly destroyed, its numbers are severely reduced from those of former times.
Dwindling numbers
The reserves that most elephants live in are seldom large enough to contain the huge ranges they require. Their traditional migration routes have been blocked by man-made structures or have been taken over for agriculture. Crops such as sugarcane and cereals, very attractive to elephants, have been sown in these and other areas around reserves. Elephants do much damage to these crops in nightly raids. The intruders are often severely injured or killed in the defensive and retaliatory action. These encounters are referred to as “man-elephant conflicts.” Romancing the Elephant offers, as the subtitle indicates, a strategy for mitigation of these. This work focusses on Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks, which hold on
e of the largest elephant populations in India.
At the core of the book is a work organised like a technical report or a doctoral thesis: a description of the topography, climate, geology and human use of the study area, a detailed discussion of the vegetation therein, estimates of the biomass, productivity and carrying capacity of the national parks and finally the recommendations for lessening the conflict between man and elephant. But this core is embedded in and permeated by a tight mass of verbal fibre that is utterly indigestible. The book states that it is written with “technical and ornamental skills.” These skills appear to have made independent contributions that were mixed together inexpertly.
Action plan
Practically all of the first two chapters and much of the rest of the book are rife with entirely avoidable, portentous statements. In many paragraphs, there is an unbridled drifting of thought, with practically each sentence touching a new idea.
Some statements such as “A keystone species is a pivotal mammalian species of the forest ecosystem,” are at variance with more widely accepted definitions. There are assertions such as “It was not uncommon to see royal stables having elephants in hundreds and thousands,” which are not supported with reference citations. Whereas the verbiage makes comprehension difficult, such pronouncements detract from the scientific value of the work. In combination, they divert the user of the book from any valuable information that it offers such as on the vegetation of Nagarahole and Bandipur.
A detailed action plan is presented in the final chapters. The strategy for reducing conflict with elephants is spelt out therein. The success, if any, that the measures have enjoyed anywhere has not been highlighted with examples.
The book has a number of colour plates. Lists of plants found in Nagarahole and Bandipur and partial lists of the vertebrate fauna of these national parks are provided. A selected bibliography is also given.
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