“Angry Crowd” was Actually Trying to Help Young Elephant
Last week we reported on the apparently horrific killing of a young elephant by a crowd in Assam, India, following footage that circulated over the internet and enraged the public worldwide. Certain aspects of the story didn’t add up at the time, and it turns out that far from trying to kill the calf, the crowd was in fact trying to help. The amateur footage that was taken was misrepresented by the report, and where people are seen hitting the calf with sticks and even pulling its tail, they were in fact trying to restrain it and stop it from heading into a waterhole where it would have been impossible to treat.
The calf was suffering from a deep, maggot-infested wound and many smaller ones that could have been several weeks old. It is thought that the wound might have been caused by a spear during a previous encounter between people and the calf’s family, and that the conflict and the injury led to the calf being separated from its herd. Somehow it had become stuck in a swamp and was found by authorities on 22nd October. Efforts were made to help it out and the veterinary team from the Wildlife Trust of India was called for assistance, reaching the scene the following morning.
Somehow the calf managed to free itself, but by then spectators had gathered. The excited crowd got involved in trying to restrain the elephant at the request of the Forest Department officials, but they were not controlled in any way. Those armed with sticks may have had them to defend themselves, and some of the more unruly members of the crowd appear to have hit the calf while it was trying to escape capture.
There have apparently been numerous other incidents where crowds have got out of control and hindered wild rescue operations. The Forest Department’s handling of the situation has been criticised, but whatever happened, it seems that the crowd were not intent on killing the calf after all.
The vets struggled to intervene because of the crowd, but efforts were made to sedate the young elephant, to calm it and make it easier to treat. After the crowd forcibly restrained the young elephant, one of the vets began treating the main wound, but it was too already too late to save it. A post-mortem diagnosed septicaemia as the most likely cause of death.
This revised account should not detract from the fact that the calf still most likely died as a result of human-elephant conflict. Perhaps the speed in which the wrong conclusions were reached just goes to show how rife conflict is between people and elephants in the region, and that measures are still desperately needed to address this crisis.
Read the report from the Wildlife Trust of India here
written by Dan Bucknell on 04th November 10
