The elephant who survived: a Nepalese study

Yesterday, I published a piece about an elephant in Nepal that, according to the authorities, has already killed around 25 people. This has caused a major global resonance. The fact is that people had previously shot at this elephant, chased him through the jungle, and even called in the army against him in an attempt to kill him. But they failed — he turned out to be very resilient. At the same time, the elephant’s habitat has been destroyed, there is not enough food base, and on the route of his annual migration there are inevitably people and industrial agriculture. Naturally, the elephant stops to find food. And he perceives people, especially armed people, as a threat.

It is possible that his family had previously been shot. What is certain and guaranteed is that people shot at him, and did so massively, leaving wounds and seriously injuring the animal (as the authorities there themselves report). But they did not finish him off. The elephant survived, and now, when he encounters a human being, he sees a threat.

The elephant caused resonance because he killed 4 people from one family. The first time was in 2012, and the second time was recently, even though they had already moved to a completely different place — but the route still passed through the elephant’s migration path.

In my piece, I spoke in detail about the problem and referred to a scientific study. I want to publish it in our headquarters; in general, I will probably publish here more often the works that I study. I think many people will find it interesting. The study is called “Tracking forest loss and fragmentation between 1930 and 2020 in Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) range in Nepal”; it was published in 2021. Scientists warned about the inevitable growth of conflicts with elephants and called for urgent action, but, as always, no one listens to specialists and no one wants to listen.

The main conclusion of the study is that the habitat of elephants in Nepal has been systematically destroyed. Within the entire elephant range of Nepal — the Chure Terai Madhesh Landscape — forest cover declined from 24,315 km² in 1930 to 19,069 km² in 2020. That means that over 90 years, 21.58% of forests were lost, mainly due to the conversion of forests into agricultural lands and settlements. The strongest blow fell on the period from 1930 to 1975, when 12.32% of forest cover disappeared. In other words, this is historically accumulated anthropogenic pressure.

Another very important point, which I noted for myself, is that scientists point to the extreme fragmentation of forest areas. The forest has literally been turned into fragments of once-living ecosystems. The number of forest fragments increased from 201 patches in 1930 to 28,559 patches in 2020. The average patch size collapsed from 121 km² to 0.7 km². And as you know, comrades, large core forests are the most important for large animals. Well, they have shrunk by 43.08%.

Therefore, the scientists’ conclusion is that conflicts between elephants and people will grow — they warned about this. And this is not because elephants are evil and want to “trample little humans,” but because their habitat has been destroyed and the routes of vital migration have been interrupted.

In short, I am publishing the study; you can download it and read it.

[p_link url='https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98327-8.pdf' size='3.6 MB' target="_blank"]Download the study (PDF)[/p_link]

This is also important to me because I plan to conduct my own personal observations there as part of expeditionary research work. And Nepal, as a state, is one of those very “cores” of future TFET zones that must be created. Besides, the country is not large, and I think the transformation of its protected area system is quite possible in the future.