Does the onus of protecting elephants from being victims of captivity fall solely on the forest authorities, or does it lie on the eager tourist paying to see the caged jumbos?
A collective social conscious effort was what the experts batted for during a panel discussion on ‘Elephant tourist: dreaming towards sustainable wildlife tourism’, here on Saturday.
The discussion, organised by ‘Friends of elephants’, was held at a time when there have been reports of a pregnant jumbo being forced into the Mysuru Dasara processions and more recently, the death of a circus elephant that was confined to an isolated building near Srirangapatna.
“Regulation is the need of the hour, without which many things will collapse. The Dasara celebration had two pregnant elephants, but no one protested. The eight corridor road from Mysuru to Bengaluru passes through an elephant zone which has already caused quite a few man-animal conflicts. None of this would have happened if the forest officials did their jobs,” said environmental activist Leo Saldanha.
A documentary on exploitation of elephants preceded a talk by environmental photographer Arati Kumar Rao on her experiences while photographing them in the wild in Sri Lanka.
