Walking with elephants in Udanti Sitanadi Tiger Reserve

“I have been chased by elephants multiple times, but I have never been hurt,” says Ravi Kumar Netam with a smile.

The 25-year-old Gond Adivasi is walking along the forest path in the Arsikanhar range. An elephant tracker in the Udanti Sitanadi Tiger Reserve in Chhattisgarh, he knows how to track the pachyderms by following their excreta and footprints.

“I was born and brought up in the forest. I don’t need to go to school to learn about these things,” says Ravi from Thenahi village in Dhamtari district. He studied till Class 12 and then started working as a fire guard for the forest department around four years ago, before switching to his current profession.

As the trackers lead us into the forest, the only sounds are the soft buzzing of insects and the wind rustling through the sal (Shorea robusta) and teak (Tectona grandis) trees. Occasionally, there is a call of a bird or the sound of a twig being snapped. The elephant trackers have to pay attention to the sounds as well as visible clues.

The elephants are recent visitors to this forest. They came from Odisha three years ago. Known among forest officials as the Sikasar elephant herd, they have since split into two groups of 20 each. One group went to Gariaband, says Deodutt Taram, and the other group is being tracked by the locals here. Deodutt, 55, joined the forest service as a guard and now works as forest ranger. With over 35 years of experience, he knows the forest like the back of his hand.

“There is plenty of water, including ponds in the forest and a few dams in the region,” Deodutt says, explaining why the big animals like it here. The forest is well-stocked with the pachyderms’ favourite food – the fruit of the mahua tree, for instance. It is also largely free of human interference. “The forest is dense and there are no mining activities. These factors make the region suitable for the elephants,” Deodutt adds.

Elephant trackers work on a shift basis, day and night, through all seasons, tracking the elephants on foot and must also visit villages to check on movements. They report their findings live on the elephant tracker app.

The application has been jointly developed by FMIS (Forest Management Information System) and the Wildlife Wing of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The information is used to alert residents within a 10 km radius of the location of the elephants.” says Varun Kumar Jain, the Deputy Director of Udanti Sitanadi Tiger Reserve.

The team tracking the elephants have no fixed work hours and work on a contract basis of Rs. 1500 a month with no insurance cover for injuries. “If the elephants come at night, we also have to come at night since I am the guard in this area. It’s my responsibility” says Narayan Singh Dhruw, a 40-year-old forest guard who belongs to the Gond tribal community.

“The elephants sleep from 12-3 in the afternoon,” he continues, “and after that the “main elephant” [bull] makes a sound [trumpet] and the herd starts walking again. The elephants call out if they spot any humans, alerting the rest of the herd.” This also alerts the trackers that the elephants are close by. “I have not studied anything about elephants. Whatever I have learnt about elephants is through my experience working as an elephant tracker,” says Dhruw.

“If the elephant walks for 25-30 kilometres a day, then it’s like a punishment,” says Nathuram. A father of three children, he lives in a kutcha two-roomed house in a hamlet in the forest. He used to work as a fire watcher for the forest department but switched to tracking elephants two years ago.

When alerted by the trackers at night, the village shakes off its slumber to go see the elephants grazing in the fields. Young men and children stand at a safe distance, looking at the huge animals in the light of their flashlights.

The residents usually keep a fire burning throughout the night to keep the pachyderms at bay, who like to come out at night to graze in the paddy fields in search of food. Some of the residents of the villages in the forest sit around the bonfire all through the night, watching on but unable to protect their crops from the herd.

“When the elephants first came here, the forest department people were so happy that they provided a lot of fruits and vegetables like sugar cane, cabbage and bananas to the elephants,” says Nohar Lal Nag, a resident of Thenahi. Residents like Nohar don’t share the joy and are worried about the damage to their crops.

When PARI visited the village of Thenahi the next morning, we saw the marks and damage left behind by the elephants. The herd had destroyed newly sown crops and there was mud on the tree trunks where they scratched their backs.

The forest department has mandated compensation of Rs. 22,249 for every acre of the land, according to Varun Kumar Jain, the deputy director of Udanti Sitanadi Tiger Reserve. But the residents here believe that the money won’t be properly provided because of the bureaucratic “process”. “What can we do now?” they ask, “whatever has to be done is to be done by the forest officials, all we know is, we do not want the elephants here.”