Bhubaneswar: Members of Parliament (MPs) of the United Kingdom (UK), along with some other celebrities, recently wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to take every step under his government’s capacity to minimize the human-elephant conflicts in the country, especially in Odisha, to prevent the extinction of the gravely endangered Asian Elephants. In the letter, quoting President Droupadi Murmu, who had once said, “Elephant is the National Heritage Animal of India. Therefore, protecting elephants is an important part of our national responsibility to preserve this heritage,” the MPs said that the unprecedented number of elephant deaths in the country is in sharp contrast with the statements made by the President.
In the last ten years, almost 1,200 elephants have been killed across the country. In the last three years, 245 elephants have been killed in Odisha alone, where mining is rampant, the letter mentioned. “Asian elephants are an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. There are only 40,000 Asian elephants remaining on the entire planet, 27,000 in India, their last bastion,” said the letter adding that India also has the highest human population in the world, at 1.41 billion, to sustain infrastructure development such as railways, roadways, and mining are rising dramatically. Asian elephants have already lost 80 per cent of their habitats to human encroachment such as agriculture, resulting in senseless elephant deaths on railways and highways. “Due to the rapidly dwindling natural resources, elephants are being squeezed out of the forests and forced to enter human dwellings in search of food and water, which is intensifying human-elephant conflict. Elephants are being poisoned, electrocuted, and driven away using illegal and brutal methods such as tossing spears attached with fireballs and even shot at to get rid of them, even as poachers are setting off forest fires to lure the wildlife and trap them,” they wrote in the letter.
Notably, in a presentation to the MPs, renowned elephant conservationist Sangita Iyer said, “Countries may have borders, but climate change does not. What happens to elephants in India will have a cascading effect around the planet. We need all world leaders to come together to implore Indian authorities to act urgently in the wake of the alarming number of elephant deaths.”
ARINDAM GANGULY, OP
