
Raman Sukumar—the man
who knows more about the Asian elephant than anyone else in the world, chanced
upon his passion by accident. In a conversation with the Indian ecologist
Madhav Gadgil, who was his PhD supervisor, the latter told Raman about a few
skirmishes involving elephants in a few villages on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
“I just took that idea and kind of ran with it,” he says.
Sukumar today is known
as foremost expert on the ecology of the Asian elephant and human-wildlife
contact. His PhD thesis was published as a monograph by the Cambridge
University Press in 1989 and also received the Presidential award of the
Chicago Zoological society. Over the years he has published a series of papers
on the human-elephant conflict, and was also instrumental in establishing
elephant corridors in the country. He
has also published four books on Asian elephants.
Sukumar is a professor at the the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), where he held the chair for eight years. He was also the Chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the IUC—The World Conservation Union.
In an interview with Fountain Ink Sukumar talks about elephant
corridors, why elephants like crops, and the impact of climate change on
forests.
When did your interest in elephants and conservation start?
I grew up in a city, in Chennai and in Mumbai.
My earlier interests were in technology and the space programme. Man landing on
the moon was a big thing when I was growing up. I was mad about planes, and
wanted to be a pilot. Or I wanted to be a space scientist.
I was fortunate that I
was a resident of Adyar (in Chennai). In those days, Adyar was a delightful
place to live in in terms of nature. You had the Theosophical Society, the
Adyar estuary, the beach, and Guindy national park. Somehow, my interest
changed between the ages of 14 and 16. I also started reading about what humans
were doing to nature. I still remember Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,
Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man, and George Schaller’s The deer
and the tiger.
When I was
transitioning to college, I decided that I was not going to become an engineer
or a doctor or write civil services or one of those things done by middle class
or upper middle class Indians. At that stage, I thought I would do something in
genetics or ecology. I thought Ecology is something I should do when I am young
(laughs). When one is out in the fields, and you still have the energy.
Genetics is mostly lab based so I can do that even when I grow old.
So, I did a Bachelor’s
and Master’s in Botany from Loyola College and Vivekananda College in Chennai.
Then, I applied for a PhD at IISc and I got selected.
Your doctoral
thesis was on man-elephant conflict.
Interactions… I called
it man-elephant interaction. I didn’t use the word conflict at that time. But,
that word got entrenched…
So how did you
decide to do it?
When I joined, Madhav
Gadgil set up the modern ecology programme here. In those days, we were in a
department called the Centre for Theoretical Studies. Madhav had come back from
Harvard with a degree in Theoretical Biology. So he started this programme, giving
an evolutionary biology approach to studying ecology. I did my course work and
started discussing possible topics with him. We discussed birds. One of our
discussions was about why the peacock has this wonderful train of
feathers—theories on sexual selection, cooperative breeding in babblers.
One day, he mentioned
casually: ‘Sukumar, elephants and people are in conflict. There is conflict
over agriculture.’ He had been to some forests in the south of Bangalore and he
found that elephants were eating crops and he said nobody seems to have studied
this.
When I heard the word
elephant, I just latched onto it. I wanted to work on larger mammals. That was
kind of a thrill doing it. I don’t know if the rest of it registered with me,
but, I heard elephant and I just said yes.
I just took that idea and kind of ran with it,
developed some proposals and did some early surveys in the south of Bangalore
in the Eastern Ghats area— Biligirirangana, Sathyamangalam, Erode, Cauvery. I
did an early survey in the mid 1980s. That time, they believed there were 150
elephants in the area. It was just a month and half survey. There was nothing
very scientific about it. It was just going around, talking to people, getting
an assessment, talking to villagers about how many elephants are there in their
area, talking to forest guards and rangers. There were probably up to 2,000
elephants in this area. It wasn’t just 150 elephants. That was a major
discovery in some sense.
In August 1980, I had
a chance to go to the meeting of the Asian Elephants Specialist Group of IUCN
that was held in Colombo. I still remember taking a train to Chennai, getting a
visa, then taking a train to Rameswaram, and then taking a ferry. It took me
three or four nights to reach Colombo. In that meeting, I made a presentation
that we had 2,000 elephants. They were very excited.
During those surveys,
I found, the Biligirirangana was a good area where it had a medium density of
elephants and it had a lot of settlements inside. It seemed like a good area
where I could study both the natural ecology of the elephants as well as the
conflicts, in terms of crop raiding by the elephants and so on. So, in late
1980s, I went and set up shop at a place called Hasanur in Sathyamangalam.
Elephants were raiding crops not just because there is no food in the forest. Of course, if there is no food in the forest, elephants will go out to raid crops. That’s a trivial kind of an explanation. On the other hand, the crops are tastier, they are more palatable, they are more nutritious, they have more protein, sodium, and calcium.
Could you give an overview of that early research?
The primary area was
crop-raiding by elephants, and, of course, human killings. And to some extent,
what humans were doing because that’s when ivory poaching was coming up in a
big way. So, I made some of the earliest estimates of how many elephants were
being killed by ivory poachers, what its implications for male-female ratio is.
I brought in elements of habitat fragmentation into it, I brought in
nutritional differences, foraging ecology into it.
Elephants were raiding
crops not just because there is no food in the forest. Of course, if there is
no food in the forest, elephants will go out to raid crops. That’s a trivial
kind of an explanation. On the other hand, the crops are tastier, they are more
palatable, they are more nutritious, they have more protein, sodium, and
calcium. I did all those measurements in those days and showed the differences
with wild grasses and cultivated grasses like ragi, paddy, etc. So, what’s
driving the elephants is really the nutritional difference. Therefore, when
they had an easy source, why not access it?
Then, I also brought
in the elements of behavioural ecology. I found out that male adult elephants
were more prone to raid crops than females. I gave an evolutionary biology
explanation for it, and subsequently, a lot of studies have shown it to be
true. In fact, there were some doubting Thomases at that time.
The elephant society
is a polygynous society—a single male can go and mate with multiple females. A
male elephant has to come into musth successfully in order to be able to
dominate other males and for female choice. Females usually choose males who
are in musth for the purpose of mating. So, this was generally known
anecdotally.
But you were the
first one to find this out scientifically?
I put this together in
a larger framework in terms of behavioural ecology. I proposed something called
the high risk, high gain strategy. Males are more prone to indulge in risk
taking behaviour. It’s very similar to humans, like young men going on motorcycles
and doing all kind of dangerous activity. Because then, the potential rewards
that they can get from it are greater. Some males might lose out completely,
and other males who are having good intuition will come into musth. They
will have more than their average number of offspring that they are able to
sire.
Females by and large
are not that prone to risk taking because most females will get to produce a
calf every four or five years irrespective. That paper was published in Animal
Behaviour. That paper has got a large number of citations. A number of
people have followed up on this work in Africa and shown this to be true.
I also looked at how
habitat influences crop raiding, especially in terms of fragmentation. I
brought in elements of seasonal movement patterns. For instance, in
Satyamangalam, I found that crop raids were absent in June to August, because
the elephants were all in a different forest area.
I also looked at
foraging ecology. Elephants can get twice as much food per hour by feeding on crops.
The crops were more nutritious. I brought all of that into a framework, and I
published a monograph that was my thesis in 1989. It was my claim to fame
(laughs).
Could you give a
sense of the scale of this conflict when you started studying it, and today?
In those days, there
was no historical data available. We were building the baseline. What I found
was that, males were sort of chronic raiders. So in many villages, round the
year, you would get males coming into raid the crops. And some of the individually
identified males that I know would raid the crops for up to four months in a
year. On the other hand, the females generally were raiding certain seasons
much more than other seasons. So I built up the baseline in terms of the
frequencies at which they were raiding.
In those days, the
raids were largely confined either to the periphery of the forest, or they were
confined to enclaves within forest areas where cultivation took place. You
didn’t get these large scale kind of output dispersal of elephants going into
towns and villages all over the place.
When I did my early
work, I compiled some statistics about the number of people being killed by
elephants across the country. I came up
with a figure of about 150 people being killed by elephants. Now recently, the
number has gone to more than 500. So the problem has tripled or even
quadrupled.
But, the elephant has not lost practically an inch of ground in the south since the 1980s. If at all, it has probably gained to a certain extent. If we go to Uttarakhand and UP, there has been a certain increase in fragmentation because of highways. But the elephant has not lost much habitat there.
So between then and
now what has happened is scale has increased in terms of geographical spread of
the elephant. In a few cases, the elephant has lost some habitat, like in Assam
or the North East.
But, the elephant has
not lost practically an inch of ground in the south since the 1980s. If at all,
it has probably gained to a certain extent. If we go to Uttarakhand and UP,
there has been a certain increase in fragmentation because of highways. But the
elephant has not lost much habitat there.
In the east, in Odisha
and Jharkhand, the situation has been very dynamic due to mining. But you’ve
also had elephants that are moving all over the place now. The range expansion
of the elephant has been very significant. If you look at the presence of
elephants in Odisha earlier, they were found in 20-odd districts. Today they’re
found in almost 30 districts.
Elephants are going
into areas where they have never been seen before. Yesterday, some elephants
were captured in Chitradurga (Karnataka). Chitradurga is not an elephant
habitat. It’s too dry to hold elephants. Elephants have gone to Tumkur (Karnataka).
In the 1980s there was no question of elephants in the northern part of Tumkur.
So the overall scale of the conflict or interaction has tripled or quadrupled
since the 1980s.
If habitats have
not really been affected, except for Assam or Odisha, what is causing this
increased migration among elephants?
It’s a complex set of
factors. I would like to divide this into two. One is the push factor, the
other is the pull factor.
One push factor might
be what’s happening inside these habitats. We still don’t fully understand what
is happening. In the south for instance, we know that invasive species like
Lantana has increased greatly in some areas. So that means that other forage
resources have reduced. And we know that grasses have reduced in all our deciduous
forests. In some of our papers we describe that.
The other push factor
might be adverse climatic events. There was a big El Nino related drought in
1982. The biggest drought of the last century globally. In 1983 you had this
whole clan of elephants leaving Hosur and marching up into Andhra. Those
elephants never came back. We created a sanctuary for them. They seem to settle
down for 15-20 years, and then they started
dispersing to Tirupathi, Ananthapur, Kadapa, etc.
One more push factor
is the population increase of elephants. If you look at central India, the
population has gone up. And the spillovers are the ones that are migrating. For
instance, there are 250 elephants in Chhattisgarh. There are 150 elephants in
South Bengal. Where are these coming from? My early population modelling had
shown, elephants can increase at about 1-2 per cent year. And our national
parks and sanctuaries and intact forest areas cannot sustain them.
The pull factors are
that the crops are more attractive, once the animals taste crops then they are
addicted to them. A lot of transformation of the landscape outside the forest
area is happening. Earlier crops used to be seasonal. Today, with better
irrigation, people cultivate three to four crops. In Odisha, in our recent work
it’s very clearly shown. All your vegetation greening has happened much more
outside the forest areas than inside the forest areas. So the habitat outside
is becoming more attractive to them.
The last is something
that’s very difficult to quantify. We used to historically capture elephants
possibly because the enforcement of conservation laws were lax in earlier
years. With stricter enforcement, elephants are less afraid of humans now, and
elephants are now adapting to human-dominated areas. There’s a process of
behavioural adaptation.
In your experience,
how have local communities dealt with new incursions of elephant populations?
Initially, very often,
like when the elephants went to Andhra, they thought Lord Ganesha has come to
our state. So the people would go fall at the feet of an elephant, offer
bananas and so on. This was in the 80’s. When people see wild elephants for the
first time, they’re amazed. They’re bewildered. They are surprised.
But then they start
finding that elephants are a nuisance. They kill people, they start raiding
crops, etc.
In south Bengal, by
2015, the population that was initially 50 elephants has now become something
like 150. They have killed 71 people in 2015. The Chief Minister was so furious
that she said she would shut down the forest department if action was not
taken.
So I think to a
certain extent, there is a resignation because generally people don’t have any
power. And here again there are different viewpoints. Some people believe that
humans should adjust to elephants completely. But I don’t think this is tenable
all over the place. People are there in a given area by accident. By historical
and geographical accident.
Somebody is paying a
cost for the conflict. And I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention to that, I
don’t think we are addressing it from that point of view.
And elephants are also
suffering. Let’s also admit that there are stories of people throwing fireballs
at elephants, shooting at them, and injuring them.
To me the most surprising was that you know, 30 years ago, you would say elephants need forests to survive. Today, I say that elephants don’t need any forests to survive. You can put elephants in a totally agricultural landscape, and they’ll survive. As long as you allow them to feed or whatever they want to do.
What is the most
surprising thing in all of your encounters with elephants wandering to new
places?
To me the most
surprising was that you know, 30 years ago, you would say elephants need
forests to survive. Today, I say that elephants don’t need any forests to
survive. You can put elephants in a totally agricultural landscape, and they’ll
survive. As long as you allow them to feed or whatever they want to do.
Elephants are
wonderfully adaptable. And so the way they are thinking about the next move and
trying to outwit people is amazing. In Tumkur, you will find elephants during
the daytime congregated in a big lake. All the male elephants go to the centre
of the lake and stay put. By 6 p.m.,
they get back into the surrounding fields and start raiding the crops.
Because people can’t do anything to the elephants in the middle of a lake which
is right out there. So they come up with these wonderful adaptations.
The other surprising
thing is society itself has been so tolerant. Take a place like Bengal, which
is a very politically active state.
How have
intervention involving displacement of elephants worked? There are reports of
elephants coming back to the place they were moved from.
We need to better
understand what makes the elephants come back and what are the conditions under
which the elephants are likely to remain where you you transfer them.
Unfortunately that understanding is not happening because we are not
scientifically investigating this. By and large, the transfers are ad hoc.
We have a hint, based
on our observations. If you take a young male elephant who is looking to
disperse from his family, and integrate with other elephant families not
related to it. Those are the cases in which if you take an elephant and shift
him out, it’s likely to succeed.
The older males are
the ones that become chronic crop raiders. These guys go 50-60 km away and
start raiding crops and then you capture them and put them back in the forest.
They’re much more likely to go back.
Corrdiors are a very
complex situation. While revising them, we discovered some new corridors. We also
found some of the older corridors were defunct. Or they were never corridors in
the first place.
I think the term
corridor is being misused and abused to a great extent. So we have stuck to our
original definition, based on the science. The corridor has to have some
functions. The functions are elephants are moving from one forest area to
another forest area. Where they are also able to spend a substantial amount of
time. It is part of the home range of the group.
But then elephants
have come from Bhadra to Chitradurga. Can you call that a corridor? In the
early years, the concept of a corridor was made quite fuzzy.
Like in Odisha for
instance, there were corridors that were defined by some agency 20 years ago.
And they were all just lines simply drawn on a map: 80 kilometres long, 100
metres wide. Which are not corridors. These are all just hypothetical lines
being drawn.
On the ground, how
are corridors actually being achieved?
The very first
corridor was actually funded by Government of India. I had identified a
corridor in Bandipur called Kanyanpura corridor. The government put an Elephant
Proof Trench right along the boundary of the Bandipur National Park which
constricted the movement of elephants. I identified this in 1997 that this was
a problem. Very fortunately, the officers at that time realised the mistake,
and then they set it right. The trench was filled up and the land was
transferred to the Forest Department. In 2001, we managed to increase the width
of that corridor from 15 meters to about 300 meters.
We have followed
different models across the country. In some cases we have had voluntary
purchase of land from people, like in the case of Thirunalli corridor in
Kerala. Then, in the Garo Green Spine project in Meghalaya, there’s a corridor
where the local communities have played a role. They said they will declare
this a gibbon and elephant corridor.
You’ve also done
considerable research in climate change. Can you talk a little bit about how
you got into that?
I think my interest in
climate change initially was triggered by the discovery of a dead elephant in
peat bog in the upper Nilgiris in 1982. I realised that I could try to look at
the past vegetation history of the area. We went there, dug pits and collected
samples. And an interesting picture emerged. We know that in India, about
18,000 years ago, the world was much, much colder than it is today. I picked up
that signal in the Nilgiri peat bog. That grasses were much more extensive in
that time, even more than they are today.
So, in my sample here
in southern India I picked up a weakening of the monsoon about 5,000 years ago
and lasting till about 2,000 years ago, A very variable kind of monsoon. It
struck me, and I published a paper in Nature on this in 1993. That was
my first paper on climate change.
By the time the whole
issue of global warming, green house emissions had emerged. I got interested in
how different forest communities are sensitive to ongoing climate change. How
future climate change will impact forests of India.
I’ve been also been
involved with groups on modelling climate change. I’ve been a contributor to the IPCC between
1995 and 2007 when it received the Nobel peace prize. I am once again back on
the IPCC, and started working on a special report earlier this year.
The other thing that I
built up was a kind of long term forest dynamics in the Nilgiris. I set up
these permanent plots in Mudumalai in the late 80s. The kind of deep insights
we are having into forest dynamics and how things like inter-annual variation
in rainfall plays a major role in driving the dynamics, mediated through fire,
mediated through invasive species, and below-ground hydrology, etc., I think
it’s fascinating. So it’s the longest and most detailed data set of it’s kind
in the country.
How did you set up
this observational plot?
So in 1988 and 89, I
went to Mudumalai, my wife and daughter. We stayed in Masanagudi, we had a
wonderful time and we had a small team of people. We would go out every day,
and we identified the area and we would take umbrellas and we would take our
lunch packs. We would work throughout the day. It took us about a year or two
to actually set up the big plot of 50 ha. I stayed for about a year an a half
in Mudumalai. I think that was one of the most enjoyable periods if you think
about it. Now that I am close to formal retirement, I sort of want to go back
to that life eventually.
The government
announced that it’s going to set up more such observational plots? How did that
come about?
In 2009, before Jairam
Ramesh, I presented a slide of data from Mudumalai, with just 2 parameters—how
many stems have died from one year to another year, and how many new stems have
come up. Let’s say we had a PhD student who joined me in 1990 and worked till
1992. They would say that this forest is dying out, because the number of trees
that are dying out is far greater than the number of new stems that are coming
up. Then if a student had worked during the late 90’s , they would say this is
a stable forest. And then between 2000 and 2004, there was a big mortality over
here. If a student had joined me in 2004, and the student completed the PhD in
2008, they would say what a wonderful forest this is.
So I asked, which PhD
thesis is right? Every PhD thesis would’ve to be thrown into the dustbin
(laughs). So Jairam Ramesh looked at it and he said, ‘Yeah, Sukumar what do you
want?’(laughs).
So my next slide was
that we need an Indian long-term ecological observatory network. Across the
country, for different biomes, you need to start picking up signals of climate
change.
As with any proposal
with the government, he said yes. And then the officials got in touch with me.
Over a period of time, we had national level workshops, brought a large number
of institutions together. It’s all done and it’s sitting right at the very edge
of the finish line (laughs). I’ve not been able to actually push it over.
How many have been
proposed?
Eight sites. Dal Lake
catchment in Kashmir, Uttarakhand and
Himachal for Western Himalayas, Arunachal Pradesh for the North East, Sal-teak
transition in Pachamarhi for central India, Nilgiris Biosphere reserve for South
India, Andaman & Nicobar islands, Gujarat and Rajasthan for arid zones, and
finally the mangroves of Sunderbans.
You are taking a sabbatical next year to Japan. What are you doing there?
I am working on a book on giving an ecological and sociological perspective on wildlife human conflicts. I’ll also be a visiting professor at Kyoto University. But I’ll also come every three months or so to India. They give me a free hand to do whatever I want to do.