Using Threatening Sounds as a Conservation Tool: Evolutionary Bases for Managing Human–Elephant Conflict in India

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Acknowledgments

Research by the author on the use of threatening sounds to mitigate elephant

crop raiding was supported by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Grant 96200-0-G078.

Notes

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In addition to their presence in Mesopotamia, they stretched along a narrow coastal plain in Persia to the Indian subcontinent and then across the entirety of Southeast Asia and southern China. See Raman Sukumar, The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior & Conservation (2003).

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In the most recent decade alone, driven by the city's reputation as the country's technology capital, the population has risen by nearly 47 percent, or an estimated 3 million people, to a total of nearly 8.5 million. The city limits have also expanded, from 134 square kilometers in 1969 to 741 square kilometers in 2007. See H. S. Sudhira, T. V. Ramachandra, & M. H. Bala Subrahmanya, City Profile: Bangalore, 24 Cities 379 (2007).

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Elephant-proof trenches and electric fences have been constructed in conflict-prone areas of southern India by local administrations, using either state or central government funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Our personal observations are that vulnerable locations exist along these barriers. In villages surrounding Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala, for example, trenches are compromised in locations where gaps could not be repaired due to the presence of seasonally running water, or where mudslides have resulted from the excessive rainfall regime. In other areas, such as the boundary of Bandipur National Park in Karnataka, electric fences are generally effective but elephants are known to mass and threaten the integrity of electric fences at traditional crossing routes or migration paths. See S. Radhakrishna & A. Sinha, Living with Elephants: Exploring the Nature and Cause of Human–Elephant Conflict in India (Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India, 2010). Also, villagers have retaliated after people were killed in elephant encounters by connecting electric fences to high-voltage power lines to electrocute elephants.

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Recently, when two elephants were being chased away from crop-raiding, they inadvertently entered the city of Mysore and became highly aggressive when faced with alien surroundings and hysteria from surprised bystanders in the streets. This resulted in the death of an unlucky victim. The incident is reported at http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/wild-elephants-on-rampage-in-mysore-city-one-killed-110859 (accessed 28 Jan. 2012).