Project to make peace with jumbos

Guwahati: Villagers along the Nagaon-Karbi Anglong foothills chose to make peace, not war, with the wild elephant herds that stray in to their areas in search of food.

Chasing wild elephants with sticks, daos and fire had become part of life in these villages.

On Sunday, residents of at least 50 villages took up the initiative to restore food and water sources for these elephants, to check attacks on their villages.

More than 200 people from 50 villages affected in the man-elephant conflict removed creepers, shrubs and plants that blanketed the grass and bamboo to lead the jumbos to sources of food.

The initiative is part of a project of the Paris-based Nature and Wildlife Association (NWA) and Green Guard Nature Organisation, NGOs working to reduce or prevent man-elephant conflict.

Under the project, named Lights for Life, Food to Live, nearly 500 headlights were distributed in 54 villages. The lights will be used to avoid elephant attacks at night.

“It is not possible to check elephant depredation without restoring their food and water sources. We took the villagers into confidence first and distributed the headlights. They agreed to join us. Apart from restoring a large area of grasslands and improving access to a waterbody, the villagers helped us to make two salt licks by dumping a huge amount of salt inside the forest. If the elephants get food, water and salt inside the forests, depredation will gradually reduce,” the secretary-general of Green Guard Nature Organisation, Raj Phukan, said on Monday.

Andy Merk, an Asian elephant expert and the president of the Nature and Wildlife Association, is helping the villagers.

The project aims to reduce man-elephant conflict in the area by 50 per cent in the next three to five years.

At least 29 people and 12 elephants have died of man-elephant conflict in the area and 122 others were injured, 798 houses damaged and nearly 30 per cents crops damaged in such attacks since 2014.

Source: https://www.telegraphindia.com/states/north-east/project-to-make-peace-with-jumbos-183961