‘All’s fair in love and war, tackle crisis by checking threat first’
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An elephant veterinarian who introduced the art of tranquilizing elephants in India shares his insights on capturing and relocating problematic elephants

April 14, 2023 06:20 pm | Updated 07:18 pm IST

Jacob Cheeran.

Jacob Cheeran.

Even as the fate of the wild elephant named Arikomban hangs in the balance with the case related to him being drawn into a fierce legal battle and the High Court staying the government plans to tranquilise and capture the jumbo, 83-year-old Jacob Cheeran, an eminent elephant vet who first introduced the art of tranquilising elephants in the country, shared his views on capturing and relocating the trouble making elephants.

Excerpts from the interview:

You have close to six decades of experience in this domain and you were instrumental in relocating around 16 elephants to a safer place after tranquilising them near Coorg in Karnataka. What’s your take on relocating Arikomban to Parambikulam in Kerala?

I can’t remember the year of relocating the herd of elephants in Karnataka. It was during the early days of my career. The elephants were then relocated when a dam was constructed across the Hemavati river. The elephant passage in the forest was obstructed due to the work on the dam, dividing the jumbo population between two sides of the proposed site. To avoid this situation, the elephants were then relocated after tranquilising. A white stripe was marked on the top of the elephants using the paints used in zebra lines in order to identify them after the relocation. If my memory was right, a couple of jumbos who were translocated had strayed into human habitations nearby. Here, the case is different. There is no guarantee that the elephant transferred to another location by tagging it with a satellite collar can be prevented from crop-raiding or straying into human habitation. First, a satellite collar is only to help us find where the animal is and warn the people in advance, that too mainly during the daytime. It would not prevent depredation by the elephant. It is mainly used to study the home range of the animals. Depredation of a free-roaming animal can be controlled only by restraining the animal, in other words, ‘capturing’. Elephants may not behave as per the court order or according to the wishes of rights activists.

Here the main concern is that the elephant would be physically bullied or treated badly by the mahouts as part of Kumki (Thappana) training in camps.

You see, India has a very long history of capturing elephants. Troublesome elephants have been treated with behaviour-modification drugs. The present Kumki named Kunju was a problem elephant at Kodanad and it was treated and corrected. A paper on this was presented at an international conference in the city of Tulsa in the United States of Oklahoma by me.

This elephant was in Kodanad in captivity. It was then showing aggressive behaviour frequently. The forest official in charge of the camp was my student at the College of Forestry. We decided to give it a behaviour-modification drug, after which, the behavioural changes were recorded. Drug levels were maintained for a while for studying behaviour changes, and later gradually decreased. Now this animal, Kunju is a well-trained Kumki. We have to have training programmes for mahouts teaching about positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. We do not train dogs by hitting.

So, do you favour capturing an elephant? Don’t you think if one elephant is captured, it will be replaced by another in the same area sooner than later?   

Listen, first we have to check out why the elephant comes into the area. Replacement with another elephant is not noticed frequently anywhere. Normally, very old animals with worn-out teeth are likely to stray into human habitation. They are coming for bananas since they are not able to eat rough forage in the forest. We had a similar situation in Vazhachal a few years ago. Another thing is the quarry industry. The vibrations of quarries are perceived by the elephants, since they are capable of sensing it on foot. The frightened animals, be they old or young, run through the forest and come to human habitation.

During emergency situations, the rule of fair play can’t be applied, especially in love and war. Here the elephant should be captured first. At the same time, policy-level interventions should be made by the government to avoid the situation of elephants straying into human habitations by addressing the issues one by one.

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