This story is from July 12, 2015

Tips to curb conflict with wild elephants

Arjun Chetry, a schoolteacher at Numaligarh in Golaghat district, no longer associates elephants with misery. Having witnessed decades of human-elephant conflict, many, like Arjun, had begun to perceive elephants as harbingers of death and destruction
Tips to curb conflict with wild elephants
GUWAHATI: Arjun Chetry, a schoolteacher at Numaligarh in Golaghat district, no longer associates elephants with misery. Having witnessed decades of human-elephant conflict, many, like Arjun, had begun to perceive elephants as harbingers of death and destruction.
Exhaustive training under conflict-mitigation experts and conservationists, however, has made a huge difference to Arjun and others like him.

The awareness training session, ‘Haati Goes to School’, recently conducted in Golaghat district by biodiversity conservation organization Aaranyak, has helped schoolteachers change their perspective on human-elephant conflict.
At the training session, the teachers were exposed to a wealth of material on elephants, in historical writing, art, culture, religion and ecology. “I never realized that the elephant is such a magnificent and important animal. We revere it as a god and yet we punish the animal. I understood that a positive outlook would go a long way in improving human-elephant co-existence. Humans have always lived with elephants,” said Arjun, who teaches at the Rongbong Srimanta Sankardev Middle English School in Numaligarh.
Arjun and the other participants at the workshop have now been tasked with imparting knowledge on human-elephant conflict to school students and other community members.
“Our basic objective is to change people’s mindset. We want to highlight peaceful co-existence with elephants, not conflict. So, we targeted teachers as they can carry forward the concept and influence students and communities,” Dilip Chetry of Aaranyak said.
Chetry said such training camps have been held in Jorhat and Golaghat districts since May and around 160 teachers have participated. The next series of training sessions will be held at Majuli island, in Jorhat district, in October this year.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA