It wasn't the most violent Human Elephant conflict I had ever seen or heard of.
Instead it was more of a crisis situation that had developed between the villagers of Chandrapur area in the outskirts of Guwahati. A herd of 30 odd elephants had descended from the nearby Amchang forests where their habitat had been robbed of by human settlers and the wildlife mafia.
After some damage to the standing paddy crop and pulling down a few jackfruit, the people cornered the herd to a bush within the croplands. Although no fire arms, crackers or arrows were aimed at the jumbos, yet with the hooting and yelling the herd was moving back and forwards seemed disturbed and did make a couple of attempts to charge at the men. On a closer observation I saw a baby ellie holding on to its mom, surrounded by the other members of the herd.
Fearing that things could get worse if the threatened dominant mother or the matriarch decide to take on. I appeal them to calm down. As the voices dimmed and the disturbed ellies seemed relaxed and had started feeding, I dared slowly walk towards them hiding behind the bush to get a better shot with my cam.
The camera rolls for a couple of minutes as I film each member of the herd-
the baby, the mother, few young ones, the tusker . . . . .
then suddenly the mother charges on me like a flash of lightning from about 50 meters away. Lucky I saw her from the corner my left eye, right being engaged in filming the tusker. The cam rolling and my heart racing out, I turn around and run for my life. I hear a few screams of the people trying to scare the elephant who was obviously running much faster than I could.
“run !!! Its still charging”, yells a villager from somewhere. It is not easy sprinting in a bush and no sooner did I realise this I was on the ground. Turning over my shoulder I see the giant mammal shake her head down at me for a second and the quietly return to her baby.
After a brief pause numbed by the shock I do manage to rise up, pick my cam and slide out of the conflict area with a dozen of Whys on my mind.
The question most on priority being, just why did the elephant have to stop when it almost got me? She certainly did not wait to answer my question but instead taught me a very BIG lesson in life.
To never underestimate the power of a ‘threatened mother’.
My training in ‘Orphaned Elephant Management’ of playing surrogate mother to the orphaned ellies at the ‘David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’ in Kenya would certainly not have been complete without this practical field experience of confronting this real threatened mother.
With habitats shrinking and crisis snowballing into conflicts, one wonders just how far these mothers would be allowed to run for their dependent young ones before the two legged monsters corner them again.
In the pic above: Trunks rise to explore the presence of predators.
