Asia's Elephant Wars - Nearly a fifth of the world's human population lives within the range of the Asian elephant; how long can the two species coexist? - Asia: increasing human population, decreasing elephant population

National Wildlife, Oct-Nov, 2002 by Anthony Mecir

NEAR MIDNIGHT, as the village slumbers, Goonda slips out of the forest like a one-man commando unit. He smashes through the rock-hard rear wall of Lilo Das's house and snatches a sack bulging with milled rice. Women and children flee, screaming. Das and other men grab homemade bamboo spears and torches. Guards fire shots into the air.

But Goonda, "the hoodlum," cannot be stopped. Amid din and flames, he rams into a village shrine, then demolishes half of a second house, nearly trampling a sleeping family of seven.

The hulk next powers his way into the kitchen of a third house, pilfering food readied for a New Year's festival. After an hour-long rampage, he finally vanishes into the hills.

Now the village of Panbari in India's northeastern state of Assam resembles the eerie aftermath of battle. Villagers point to crumpled walls, toppled fences, a corrugated iron roof knocked askew, a grove of felled banana trees--all the work of a single elephant. "We hope he doesn't come again tonight so we can sleep in peace," says Das wearily.

A place of poor farmers and petty traders, Panbari is on the frontlines of a heart-rending war, one that's being waged in villages, fields and plantations regionwide between onetime friends-- land-hungry man and simply hungry Elephas maximus, the Asian elephant. The conflict is unlikely to end in an amicable peace treaty. In all 13 Asian nations where elephants are still found, mushrooming human populations mean shriveling habitat for elephants, as well as heightened conflict between people and animals. In Indochina--where elephant losses are most dramatic--hunting, particularly for the ivory trade, is also decimating the species. "Over the past few years, around 5,000 wild elephants--about 10 percent of the remaining population--have been killed in Asia," says Elizabeth Kemf, an Asian elephant expert for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "Meanwhile, hundreds of people have lost their lives as humans and elephants fight over space."

The origin of today's crisis is not hard to fathom, and one country, Thailand, is a typical example. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with some 90 percent of its land under forest cover, Thailand could harbor an estimated 300,000 wild and captive elephants. One hundred years later, the human population has soared from fewer than 8 million to 63 million, and the green canopy has shrunk to less than 20 percent of its former area. According to Kemf, wild elephant numbers have also plunged--to just 2,000. Even so, the nation's devastated forest habitat is inadequate to house and feed the animals that remain.

For their part, elephants are no slouches when it comes to consumption. Each day, a single adult spends up to 18 hours munching down more than 500 pounds of grasses, roots, leaves, bark and fruits--the equivalent in weight to a human eating 1,000 steaks. The animal also gulps more than 30 gallons of water a day as it scours the landscape like a mechanical harvester.

Given the ravenous appetites of both species, and the resulting battles over dwindling resources, casualties have been high on both sides. In India--which houses Asia's single largest wild elephant population-- some 200 people are killed by elephants annually, while 120 to 150 elephants die at the hands of Homo sapiens. Throughout the continent, understandably angry rural residents electrocute the animals with high- tension wires or fell them with guns, poison-tipped arrows and rice wine--an elephant favorite--laced with insecticides. Poachers and human-induced accidents add to the toll.

It's no wonder that little remains of an Asian elephant empire that once stretched from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Yellow River in northern China. According to WWF and IUCN--The World Conservation Union, only about 35,000 to 45,000 Asian elephants survive in the wild today, less than a tenth the estimated total of their better-known cousins, the African elephants. Countries such as India, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and Sri Lanka still house greatly diminished but viable populations, while prospects for long-term survival in impoverished and war-scarred Indochina--Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia--are gloomy. In the past decade alone, elephant numbers have plunged by as much as 95 percent to fewer than 80 individuals in Vietnam. The animals have long vanished from West Asia and all but a small southern corner of China. Altogether, the Asian elephant inhabits some 169,885 square miles today, an area roughly the size of Sweden.

Beyond body counts, what is most tragic about the decline of the Asian elephant is that for thousands of years the animal has played a significant role in culture, religion and daily life throughout Asia. Today those age-old bonds are about to snap. In the words of D.K. Lahiri-Choudhury, an elephant expert for IUCN--The World Conservation Union, "We in India have had a tradition of interaction with elephants going back millennia, and now man has decided to destroy it."

Carved seals from the Indus Valley showing elephants with cloth draped over their backs suggest that the species was domesticated at least 4,000 years ago. The animals proved useful to rich and poor alike. A humble peasant might use an elephant to journey through otherwise impassable jungle while his king marshaled the creatures for battle against enemies or ordered them to stomp criminals to death.