Founder Mark Shand returns to where it all began
In 1988, travel writer Mark Shand arrived in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Orissa in eastern India, and rescued a beautiful female elephant, Tara, from a life of begging and misery on the streets of India. From Bhubaneshwar, he set off with Tara and an odd bunch of travelling companions on a 1,000-mile adventure. Little did he know at the time that this journey would lead to the foundation of the charity Elephant Family. Twenty-two years later Mark has had the opportunity to return to where it all began.
Having first visited the Sun Temple of Konark, where his journey officially began, Mark returned to the beach on the Bay of Bengal (pictured above) where he spent his first night with his beloved Tara - and where he almost lost her straightaway! Having little knowledge of elephants, and relying on his companions, Tara had been harnessed to a tree too weak to hold her, and she took off! Eventually Mark caught up with her, and then embarked on an incredible adventure that he subsequently recounted in his bestselling book Travels on my Elephant.
However, it was for a far more serious reason that Mark came back to Orissa so many years later.
Orissa is known as the “Elephant State” and is steeped in a rich culture and history of these magnificent species. But much has changed since Mark and Tara travelled through here. Since then, one third of Orissa’s wild elephants have been killed. Mining and industry have cut great swathes through the elephants’ traditional homes, leaving them literally trapped in small pockets of forest not large enough to sustain them, unable to cross to their original feeding sites.
As a result, starving and stressed elephants regularly try to find a way through crops or areas of human habitation, and encounters between people and elephants are becoming increasingly ugly, with fatalities on both sides. To add to this ongoing tragedy, hundreds of elephants have been fatally electrocuted from poorly maintained, low-hanging power cables, and widespread poaching is causing further serious concern.
Elephant Family is stepping in to redress this balance and restore the “Elephant State” by working on a number of hard-hitting initiatives with its local partner organisation the Wildlife Protection Society of India. These initiatives include building “elephant-friendly ramps” so they can cross the steep-sided canals, and providing watering holes and feeding sites, securing and restoring habitat links through the increasingly industrialised landscape. In the meantime, those responsible for the low-hanging power lines are to be held to account in the courts, and the Forest Department is to be given support to perform its duties more effectively.
The task ahead is not easy, as relations between the communities and the elephants – which are still otherwise revered – are at an all-time low. However, Elephant Family is now finally poised to take on the challenge with WPSI to secure a better future for the 1,800 elephants of this very special region of India.
As he sketched a star (“Tara” means “star” in Hindi) in the sand encompassed within a heart, Mark made it clear that, “We always have to remember one thing: it was an elephant that started all this, and it was right here where it all started twenty two years ago. This is an emotional moment for me and I owe it to Tara and her wild cousins to try and ensure their survival. Jai Mata Tara!”
written by Dan Bucknell on 01st December 10
