Elephants seek food elsewhere if their route is blocked, and raiding crops and grain stores brings them into conflict with people, often resulting in deaths on both sides.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Surrounded by a burgeoning human population, Asian elephants have to contend with the spread of settlements and farming, and the demands of rapidly developing nations: plantations, mines, railways, and irrigation canals have carved up former wilderness.
Illegal killings of elephants are being linked to organized crime and the funding of armed militia groups. Many consumers in Asia do not realize that by buying ivory, they are playing a role in the illegal wildlife trade and its serious consequences.
Elephants love to play around. They are very intelligent animals. They have a strong bond, at times stretching to several decades, with their mahouts.
The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants.
The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.
Elephant populations in India and also in the whole of Asia are under severe stress. The captive ones are rendered jobless due to changes in the mode of transport and lifestyle of people. The ones in the wild are also no better off, as the forests are shrinking.
Elephants can live to an age of up to 70 or 80 years and they have a good memory. It could be they come across an area that is experiencing a drought. Then they continue on their path and run into people.
Elephants are not human, of course. They are something much more ancient and primordial, living on a different plane of existence. Long before we arrived on the scene, they worked out a way of being in the world that has not fundamentally changed and is sustainable, and not predatory or destructive.
One researcher just determined that African and Indian elephants make each other sick. When a new animal or plant is introduced to a habitat bad things happen. The biggest danger to native wildlife is foreign wildlife.
The threat of extinction is more real than many realise. And the damage done to elephants directly leads to destruction of the ecosystem.
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