human-wildlife conflict

When I see an elephant ___

‘When did you last see an elephant?’ Over the course of two days we asked players this question, and heard varied answers that often transformed into captivating tales about their experiences with pachyderms. We were at ATREE’s 25th Anniversary event, and the context for this question was the play-testing for a board-game we’ve created with elephant-human conflict as the theme.


The board game itself was first designed in 2016, with the aim being to emulate human-elephant conflict in India. In 2019, my colleagues Nandini and Shashank worked with Tejaswini N to create the second iteration of the design. The game was play-tested with friends and family in February and March 2020, before the pandemic curtailed any future development. In July 2022, Tejaswani suggested that we apply to play-test the game at a board-game event ATREE was hosting in Bangalore as part of their 25th anniversary celebration. ATREE accepted our application, and we began production.

Prior to producing the physical prototype, Aswathy S and I ran online trials of the game. We set up the play-test online in Figma for over two weeks, with wildlife biologists, ecologists, geographers and even a climate-scientist joining us! While we played to see as many instances of play as possible, one particular game stuck with me. Elephant movement in the game was hindered, and the player had the option to relocate the elephant to the nearest sanctuary. However, the nearest sanctuary was full and was unable to accept the elephant. This quandary prompted a wildlife biologist to remark; ‘… makes one question the true carrying capacity of our sanctuaries.’ 

Screengrab of a play-test online in Figma.

Once we had enough evidence to finalise on a physical prototype, I had it produced in person in Mumbai. It was by a chance that I was able to produce it quicker than expected; the combination of being in Mumbai, and in vicinity of previous contacts capable of delivering a quality-prototype that is easy to engage with.

On 17th August, we set out from Panjim to Bangalore by road. Our route passed through Mollem, another one of India’s various protected areas that’s threatened by fragmentation from linear infrastructure projects. Occurrence of human–wildlife conflict (HWC) increases when humans negatively affect the needs of wildlife or vice versa. It’s a difficult topic to navigate because such conflicts can cause damage to property &/ life. On the other hand, one major cause of human–wildlife conflict is increasing the human population next to wildlife habitats. In this game, players take on the role of villagers who defend their farms and villages from elephant movement through strategic fence placement and a bit of luck.

ATREE’s contribution to the field of conservation is extensive, while also pioneering knowledge systems to tackle complex conservation problems. The opportunity to learn from this room was exhilarating. On day one, we set the table up with our play elements for a brief period in the first half and then hosted a few game-plays during the second half. The first person to approach the table was a gentleman who walked past and then walked back up to enquire what was on the table. His curiosity was piqued after reading the title of the game! After our brief explanation, he spoke about the migration of the elephants in the Uttara Kannada and the consequent fear of spotting a jumbo. We took a break for lunch and then made our way to Dr. Nitin Sekar’s talk on conserving species that cause harm to us. His words on empathy for elephants resonated yet again before we returned to run more sessions with newer participants and conservation enthusiasts.

On the second day, we put out a post on social media inviting people to come play test with us. Before we started the setup, we visited our fellow participants at the board game event. I found a game on implementing local-level policies to reduce carbon emissions by two students of public policy engaging.

In our elephant-human conflict game, the player who plays first is determined by the answer to the question - ‘When did you last see an elephant?’ The participant with the most recent encounter begins the game, and then the game continues clockwise. Our first play-testers were a policy student and research assistant. The mechanics of the game were slightly complex to grasp before the game began, but as the game progressed, our play-testers made clearer strategic movements.

While we ran more sessions on the second day, there were particular instances of game-play that were most fascinating. In my opinion, the most thought-provoking game was the one where the players were a wildlife student, a conservation scientist, a professor of sociology, and a product designer. One of them was a board game enthusiast while for the others, it was the first time they were playing a  strategy game. One was a field practitioner and another was aiming to be one. Lessons were imparted on contextual sociology, game mechanics and idealism. Some of the conversations floating out over the board were - ‘Why do the sanctuaries have to be two hexes apart? No need for defragmentation, push all human development away from them’ or ‘What happens when the elephant is directed away from the board? It’s annihilated / It’s relocated to a sanctuary.’ Decisions made by the participants reflected their principles in ecological practices itself. As the rounds progressed idealism and realism clashed further.

Discussions on game play and context.

The second most fascinating game was when I played with two students of design from IISc. One of them had clear prior experience of human-wildlife conflict and the other participant did not. This was clearly displayed in the manner in which the game was played. One of them prioritised protecting farms and villages, while the other person conducted back-to-back development activities. Strategic play, and some luck, resulted in the person without prior wildlife experience winning the game. Their feedback suggested that we implement a particular model to randomise elephant movement in the game. While there are articles and papers to be read on the topic, the prospect itself is exciting! 

The last game at the event was my favourite one out of all, because it was the first game I had been completely kicked out of! The participants of the game were my friends from Bangalore. One of them was a friend from architecture college who now worked as a UX researcher, another a biotech major I’d met as part of a summer school programme earlier in the year, and the final participant was a pleasant surprise. We had been working together virtually for months, but didn’t recognize each other until our introduction. It was a chance meeting in real-life which was wholesome! The play itself was interesting to me because it clearly portrayed their personalities. There was an attempt to work with the commons, there was an aggressive development bid as well as a plea for a neutral stance, while I watched the game unfold from the sidelines. 

There are enormous gaps in ecological awareness beyond protected areas and lived experiences involving wildlife. I’ve been able to witness the varying conclusions of hypothetical choices, hear the flight or fight choices by humans and elephants alike. The experience of working, producing, and hosting this game has been unlike any other.

Anatomy of an Unsuccessful Project: The Tiger and the Thermal Camera

Early in October, a former colleague and current field biologist with one of our NGO partners called me, and when I didn’t answer, sent me a message. “Hi. Trying to contact you for some help. Please call me when you are free”. It was Ashtami, the 8th day of Durga Puja, and I was on leave in Calcutta, visiting puja pandals across the city. We take our holidays at TfW quite seriously, and amidst all the festivities, unable and unwilling to take a call, I asked him to send me a voice note or an email.

The email arrived. “Hope this email finds you well. This is to inform you that a tiger has killed two people in Valmiki Tiger Reserve [The only Tiger Reserve in Bihar]. These incidents happened on the fringe area of forest and sugarcane fields. Bihar Forest Department is trying to capture this animal using box trap cages and chemical immobilization method. Forest department has placed rescue teams and also installed several trap cages. It's difficult to locate the animal in the sugarcane field. We would need a drone with IR/thermal camera to locate the animals. Is it possible for you to visit and assist the rescue team of the forest department in tracking and locating the tigers in the sugarcane field?”

This sort of request is familiar to us; we’ve managed field operations for a similar project in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, and know of numerous other similar projects across India. However, at this point in time, we do not own our own drone+thermal camera. Aside from the prohibitive cost (~INR 6 lakhs), our core function as an organisation is not to respond to emergencies, but to help our partners amplify their conservation impact. However, receiving this request almost made me feel guilty about not acquiring our own drone+thermal camera.

However, It turned out that there was already a drone + thermal camera in the field, but with some software issues. It was now Dashami, the final day of Durga Puja. I took some time out before the day started to provide trouble-shooting advice via text messages. I was later informed that they were not able to get this drone to work.

The next day, with both Durga Puja and my holidays over, another former colleague at the same organisation messaged me: “Can you help with drone services there or get someone else who can on an emergency basis.” The message continued with the news that a young girl had been killed that morning, and that it was only a matter of time before the Forest Department would need to shoot the tiger dead. Locating the tiger was of the utmost importance, either to tranquilise it or to kill it, ideally before it killed more people.

As part of India Flying Labs, and with links to the Drone Federation of India, we are embedded in India’s drone industry and have access to a large network of drone operators and manufacturers. I put the word out that there was an urgent conservation mission in rural Bihar that needed at least one drone + thermal camera as well as trained operators. In terms of work, this involved numerous phone calls, emails and text messages, as well as assessments on our part of how capable we felt a drone operator was of working on this particular project. I finally spoke to someone from an organisation who, in our opinion, had the capacity to help. I gave them the full project brief, and then connected them to my former colleagues. Later the same day, the tiger killed another person.

The next evening, when I called the field biologist to check on the situation and how he was, he said, “Not good”. The tiger had killed a mother and her pre-teen son early in the morning, and had been shot dead during a Forest Department operation in the afternoon. This particular tiger, designated a man-eater and posthumously identified as the three-year old male T104, had killed between 9 and 12 people (there are conflicting reports), with four confirmed kills in its last three days alive. The impact of his actions on Bihar’s tiger conservation efforts will manifest in the future, and they are unlikely to be positive in any way. It is unlikely that these recent events have helped convince local communities around Valmiki Tiger Reserve that tiger conservation is in their best interests.

I wasn’t in the field for this project; my role was purely to network and connect people who believed that they needed drone services urgently with those who would possibly be able to provide it. In the end, matters escalated rapidly, and concluded before additional resources were allocated. I’m too removed from the situation to assess whether a working drone + thermal camera would have helped locate the tiger earlier, preventing the later human deaths. The fact remains that we’ll never know; many people, and a tiger, are now dead.

Note: The email and text exchanges detailed have been edited to maintain the senders’ anonymity.

A first person account of the capture of a tiger in Northern India: Four elephants, a bulldozer and a drone.

(Cross-posted from WildLabs)

In February 2017, a tiger killed two people within a span of 3 days near the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Indian province of Western Uttar Pradesh, and was declared a man-eater. With state elections around the corner, and local villagers threatening to boycott the polls unless the tiger was removed from the area, the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department (UPFD) began an operation with the objective of capturing or killing the tiger. They also called in a drone team to be a part of the operation, primarily to have a highly visible way of broadcasting to the local communities that something was being done to catch the tiger.

Drones are still a novelty in India; the Directorate General for Civil Aviation banned their use by civilians in October 2014 till further regulations were issued, which haven’t arrived till date. However, there are civilian companies who provide drone services, bypassing the regulatory ban through the use of waivers from the authorities, or by working directly for government agencies as was the case in this operation. I was tasked with coordinating between the drone team and the UPFD, and we arrived in Pilibhit on the afternoon of the 10th of February.

 

The tiger had been located in a sugarcane patch the previous evening, but had managed to give its hunters the slip. On the day we arrived, extensive search operations were on over a large area to locate the general whereabouts of the tiger. While waiting for information, we demonstrated the use of the drones to the UP Forest Department staff. Both were quadcopters, that is, drones with four rotors that are capable of taking off vertically and of hovering in mid-air like helicopters. One was the consumer-level DJI Phantom 4, while the other was the professional-level DJI Inspire - both are equipped with controllable cameras, and are commonly used for videography purposes. It turned out that the Forest Department also had a Phantom 4 of their own, which they’d brought down from Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. Our drone operators used the afternoon to conduct basic training, showing the UP Forest Department staff how to fly their drone safely and use it for surveillance.

Tiger capture operations can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and often end inconclusively. So our initial plan was to spend at least three days in the area conducting drone operations. Subsequently, depending on how things played out, and how useful the drones were perceived to be, we’d either head back to Delhi or extend our stay in the area.

As it turned out, this tiger really was a man-eater; it made its third kill in 5 days in the early morning of the 11th of February. We reached the kill site, in a village to the west of Pilibhit, shortly after we heard the news and saw that a large crowd of people had gathered. One group of people surrounded the Forest Department staff who were interviewing the victim’s brother, while others surrounded local headmen who were giving interviews to the press. There was also a continuous flow of movement as people went to view the body of the last victim, which lay in a sugarcane patch nearby. On the ground, next to a pile of sand not far from the body, was a clearly defined pugmark.

Shortly after we got to the kill site, the Forest Department received information that fresh tiger pugmarks had been found about 2km north of the kill. All the action quickly re-centered itself; two trained Forest Department elephants were summoned and we headed out to that area to join the operation. We sent up the Phantom 4 to scan two large sugarcane patches where the tiger could potentially be hiding, with the camera pointing downwards. We weren’t really expecting to see anything through the dense greenery, and we didn’t. However, while there was a chance that we’d actually find something, these flights also served to keep the crowds that had gathered distracted and away from the elephants, which were searching some distance away.

Most people in India haven’t seen drones in action; I live in Delhi and work on drone policy issues, but even I’d only seen them used twice in India before this operation. While one does eventually get used to them, there’s something fascinating about watching these small robots take flight, and the local residents who’d come out in droves to watch the tiger being captured weren’t immune. The open-top safari jeep we were operating the drones out of was constantly surrounded by people, and it’s the closest I’ve ever been to feeling like a movie star. Since there were so many people in close proximity, we were launching the Phantom 4 off the hood of the vehicle but landing it by direct hand-capture, which is a very showy manoeuver. We did this for about 20 minutes, and then word came that the elephants had pinpointed the square plot of sugarcane the tiger was actually hiding in.

We headed there and kept the drones out of the air till they were called for, watching as the operation unfolded. Forest Department staff set up nets around the outer perimeter, guarded by the veterinarians and forest guards armed with tranquilizer, and regular, guns riding on elephant-back within the sugarcane patch itself. Shortly after the nets were put up, there was the sudden trumpeting of an elephant. We heard that the tiger had charged at one of them, and scratched it near its right eye and on its trunk. The operation then halted for a while as everyone waited for two more trained elephants, a bulldozer and a truck, carrying a cage, to arrive on site.

Once all the resources were in place, the bulldozer began spiraling inwards into the sugarcane patch, gradually removing the tiger’s cover while leaving a thin fence of sugarcane along the perimeter. We sent up the larger drone at this point, both to document the operation and to keep it ready in case the Forest Department staff wanted to try and use it to flush the tiger out of the sugarcane.

From our vantage point outside the sugarcane patch, we could see the top of the bulldozer as it slowly mowed down the sugarcane, followed by a view of the elephants, with their riders, moving placidly through the sugarcane patch. It could have been any other calm afternoon, but the peace was suddenly disrupted by a swift burst of confused action. We saw a sudden burst of motion from the elephants, and I heard trumpeting, a roar and two distinct gunshots. However, later review of the video footage from the drone made the sequence of events much clearer. The bulldozer had removed most of the sugarcane, leaving only a small central patch standing, and once it was done, the four elephants took a circuit of the central patch. At the point the action had begun, two of the elephants either sensed the tiger, or their riders spotted it. Either way, both elephants wheeled to the left and charged into the sugarcane patch, and the other two followed. All four flailed around in the sugarcane. A little distance away, there was movement in the underbrush, and then the tiger burst out into the circle cleared by the bulldozer, and then dashed back into cover in the sugarcane left standing along the perimeter.

As it turned out, the veterinarians had managed to shoot the tiger with at least one tranquilizer dart. The elephants and their riders were pulled back as everyone waited to make sure that the tranquilizers had taken effect. In the meanwhile, the tiger doubled back into the sugarcane patch and then passed out. Two of the elephants then went back in to the patch, and once the personnel on elephant-back confirmed that the tiger had been incapacitated, they called the truck with the cage in. They dismounted from the elephants, quickly carried the tiger to the truck, pushed it into the cage and locked it. 

It’s at this point that the surrounding crowds stormed the site and climbed onto the truck, snatched the keys from its hapless driver and slashed its tires. Newspaper reports of the day claim that the ‘angry locals’ also tried to set it on fire, but I didn’t see any evidence of that. Also, while I’m sure that there was anger and resentment on the part of the local communities against the man-eating tiger, the Forest Department and the State Government, I don’t think that the crowd itself was angry. I’ve grown up in Kolkata when it was under Communist rule, and I’ve seen angry mobs on the streets. This, however, seemed to be a crowd composed primarily of young men who were torn between wanting to hurt the tiger, see the tiger or merely be a part of the giant party in progress. The abundance of freshly-bulldozed sugarcane proved to be attractive to the mob - while some of it was being gnawed upon by those on the fringes of the mob, a lot of it was thrown at the truck, at other people or into the air. The elephants with their mahouts were still on the field near the truck, being used to help control the crowd. When one of the airborne sugarcane sticks went very close to one of the elephants, its mahout glared at the section of people from where it had come, and that was the end of the sugarcane throwing.

The Forest Department staff behaved admirably; once it was clear that the crowd couldn’t actually get to the tiger within the cage and harm it, they pulled the elephants out to one side, and kept them facing away from the crowd. They’d sent for a tractor to pull the disabled truck with the cage away, and in the meantime let the crowd spend its passion and energy climbing all over the truck and the cage. It was only when the tractor arrived that the Forest Department staff, and some police who’d been deputised to help, set up a cordon around the truck and made a real effort to push the people off. The truck was then attached to the tractor by ropes, and towed away with its captive and unconscious inhabitant.

The removal of the tiger from the site marked the end of the operation.  It was successfully captured alive and sent to the Lucknow zoo. The elephants, their mahouts and the drone operators were thanked for their service, and everyone went on their way. While the drone deployment provided a useful record, and a unique perspective on the events of the day, it was the tried and tested age-old technique of hunting tigers, using beaters (or in this case, a bulldozer) and riders on elephant-back, that resulted in a successful resolution to the story of one of the man-eaters of Pilibhit in 2017.

With thanks to Ayush, Shakti, Harshad, Mudit, Naresh and Jaspreet.