Arresting image of human elephant conflict wins photo prize

A photo of an elephant and a calf fleeing a mob that set them on fire has won top entry in a wildlife photography competition.

The image “shows the two animals running among a crowd that has hurled flaming tar balls and crackers at them, reportedly to ward the elephants away from human settlements,” says The Guardian.

Titled “Hell is here”, the picture was taken by Biplab Hazra, a wildlife photographer from West Bengal’s Bankura district, and won the 2017 Sanctuary’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

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Announcing the award, Sanctuary magazine said “this sort of humiliation... is routine”.

“The ignorance and bloodlust of mobs that attack herds for fun, is compounded by the plight of those that actually suffer damage to land, life and property by wandering elephants and the utter indifference of the central and state government to recognise the crisis that is at hand,” the magazine said in a note accompanying the photograph.

“For these smart, gentle, social animals who have roamed the subcontinent for centuries, hell is now and here,” added Hazra.

The photo caused consternation on social media.

Mainak Mazumder, who lives in Bankura, commented that villagers were responsible for “heavy habitat destruction” and that “elephants have been subjected to terrible abuses and tortures,” reports the BBC.

But, Mazumder added, elephants also have “wreaked havoc” by destroying crops, damaging farmland, and have “killed innocent people”.

In March of this year, forest officials in West Bengal’s Bankura district started issuing SMS alerts about the movement of elephants to prevent human-animal conflicts that killed 29 people last year, the Hindustan Times reported.

“This sort of conflict is increasing every day,” said Christy Williams, the World Wildlife Fund country director in Myanmar, who researches elephants in the region.

He said elephants were increasingly being pushed out of existing habitats by human behaviour. “There are forests being cut down, degraded, and also being fragmented by development like new roads and pipelines.”

Co-existence between humans and elephants was especially difficult, Williams said.

“Elephants are huge – they are the biggest mammal on land and they have huge home ranges, around 800 sq km. Such huge unreserved forest tracts are becoming very rare,” he said.

“In the end, humans always win, whatever the species, however powerful it is.”