Local conservationists as well as Forest Department officials think that a long-term solution to the problematic human - animal interactions in Gudalur and Pandalur should involve efforts to facilitate co-existence between the two.
Residents living in the Cherambadi TANTEA estate in Kolapalli, where two of the people who died after attacked by a wild elephant, have requested the Forest Department’s help to relocate them from their current dwellings and move them to safer locations. The demands were made to the officials during a recent visit to their houses.
Kannagi, a resident, said the surrounding regions of the Glenrock Estate, Kottamalai, Samiyarmalai and Kappikadu, are used regularly by wild elephants. “There are around 15 families in two housing lines in the estate, and due to the presence of elephants, we wish to be moved to safer locations,” she said.
Srinivas R. Reddy, Managing Director of TANTEA, said they were open to helping families working in government tea estates to relocate to safer locations. The TANTEA was working with the Forest Department to help mitigate conflict by handing over portions of the estates which were under their control for increasing habitat availability for elephants.
Mr. Reddy said that the TANTEA had already handed over 256 hectares of plantation land back to the Forest department in Cherambadi, Cherangode, Devala and Pandiar to help with conflict mitigation.
Conservationists said that the human - elephant interactions could be reduced by moving people away from pathways used by elephants and ensuring effective elephant-monitoring.
“A micro scale zoning exercise is vital. In areas where overlap of people and elephants is inevitable - in coexistence zones - the welfare of both people and elephants need to considered. As land tenure in this region is highly volatile and unstable, any such efforts at zoning are extremely challenging. No long term solutions are possible without first sorting this out," said a local conservationist and elephant researcher.
Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, I. Anwardeen, said that Gudalur was a traditional “wildlife-bearing area” comparable to the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. “People living in this region need to be sensitized on the need to share the space with wildlife, he said.
“Gudalur is a diffuse-boundary landscape, and elephants have to cross landscapes populated by humans, and some of these habitats, need to be restored and made wildlife-compatible. Even if this is achieved, there needs to be a certain amount of coexistence between people and animals and this is the kind of relationship that we are trying to facilitate for the future,” he noted.