THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Of the eight elephants involved in the death of nine men during 2016, six were in ‘musth’ and had demonstrated consistent violent behaviour in the past. A couple of these elephants had killed at least three people before. Such dangerous traits could have been spotted, and the disturbed elephants kept out, had the elephant task forces constituted by the forest department in 14 districts been active.
The MoEF had issued an order in November 2014 to constitute state- and district-level elephant task forces. Elephant owners had strongly objected to the decision as the nine-member state-level Task Force, which will be chaired by the additional chief secretary (forests and wildlife), as it will not have a single representative of theirs. The five-member district-level task forces will have one representative of elephant owners, but even this member will be nominated by the divisional forest officer.
The district-level task forces have been mandated to conduct regular inspections of captive elephant facilities to check abuse and overwork. They have also been mandated to check the inter-state transfer of elephants in the guise of gift or donation or lease or exchange. The state-level task force will monitor the functioning of the district-level task forces. Heritage Animal Task Force secretary V.K. Venkitachalam said that the absence of task forces has granted elephant owners and festival organisers a carte blanche of sorts to employ disturbed or diseased elephants and overwork them.
“A temple in Thrissur paraded a wounded elephant named Kalidasan during the Vishu celebration. Kalidasan had wounds all over the body and it was paraded right in front of district collector, district police chief and divisional forest Officer,” Venkitachalam said. Kalidasan had turned violent and created a scare during the same period consecutively for the last three years. The forest department, through various circulars, had directed that wounded elephants should be strictly kept out of festivals. But these directive were generally ignored.
