Jumbo barriers’ success limited: Experts

NT Correspondent
Bengaluru:

Even as the forest department is planning to introduce steel wire rope fencing around parts of Bannerghatta to keep out elephants, zoologists and veterinarians have opined that such barriers have limitations. They said contiguous forests offered a better habitat for the largest land animal, while fragmented woods with barriers designed to keep out jumbos were not ideal.

Others went so far as to call fencing of the forests unscientific. The other barriers that surround sections of Bannerghatta are elephant proof trenches, solar tentacle fencing and railway barricades.

A wildlife veterinarian, on condition of anonymity, said the different types of barriers were a necessary measure, but the elephants being highly intelligent animals always figured out a way to render them ineffective. “It’s partly scientific. It’s tried, sound and effective. It’s just a metallic rope (steel wire rope fencing) so that elephants cannot break it. But I would say elephants would overcome a strategy to overcome it one day or the other,” he said.

He confirmed that elephants often ground electric fences by dropping trees on them, rendering the barriers ineffective and then pass over them. “All methods have limitations; unless we have stone walls that break the continuity of the forests and movement, then microhabitats will be affected. In a larger contiguous territory like Wayanad, you don’t have to worry because the area is huge, but if it is a fragmented forest, definitely you should worry about conflict,” he said, adding that more elephant herds concentrated in a smaller area would cause conflict between them over food and water.

A zoologist, who did not wish to be named, said that barriers were not scientific. “It is definitely not scientific,” he said. “Deforestation and agricultural activities are destroying habitats. So slowly animals, especially elephants are coming out of the forests. They are coming out for drinking water. They have to cross the barrier,” he added.

‘Invasive species threatening woods’

The veterinarian added that invasive species like lantana and senna spectabilis were threatening the vegetation that elephants depended on for sustenance. “Jumbos are grass eating mammals. Habitat changes of course influence conflict.

For example, there was a huge blooming of bamboo and that triggered a conflict in 2014 and 2015 in some areas in Kandiguda forests in Wayanad. They’re connected with Madhumalay, Bandipur and Nagarhole. It’s a huge landscape. It’s the largest elephant reserve and is around 3,000 square kilometres. So the conflict happening in many of these areas is just bulls (individual elephants), as opposed to herds.

This is a habitual conflict that often only a handful of bulls are involved in locally. If there is a big habitat change, then whole herds get involved in areas like Bengal,” he said. “In such situations, we have to erect some kind of physical barriers, but I’m totally against elephant proof trenches as it takes up a lot of water,” he said.