Beyond ‘rogue’ label: An elephant’s story sheds light on media’s role in human-wildlife conflict narratives

CME3, a tusker aged 35-40 years, made headlines for close and deadly encounters with people in early 2024. Following the deaths of six individuals and severe injuries to another, he was labelled a rogue, a menace and problematic in the press.

As India faced a rise in adverse human-elephant interactions, where both people and elephants lost their lives, much of the attention focused on portraying elephants as habitual troublemakers. CME3, however, had been observed for about a decade and this account seeks to challenge the media's portrayal of him.

Until 2014-15, elephants travelled between Chhattisgarh and Odisha, passing through Mahasamund and Bargarh, as well as the Nuapada and Balangir districts. This migration route was cut off after an irrigation canal was built along the state border. By this time, three elephant herds, named Chanda, Rohansi and Seekasher, had entered Chhattisgarh.

The Chhattisgarh Forest Department assigned the tuskers in these herds the labels CME1 to CME5, with CME3 belonging to the Chanda herd. The department continuously monitored elephant movements to prevent encounters with people.

From 2014-2021, CME3 mostly roamed the forests of Mahasamund and Baloda Bazar districts. On October 22, 2021, the Chanda herd entered Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district for the first time and stayed until March 15, 2022 before returning to Chhattisgarh. They visited again on August 11, 2022, during which the herd was continuously monitored.

After 2022, CME3 moved between Gadchiroli and Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh. He was seen feeding on crops, though no incidents involving people were reported. In November 2023, CME3 entered Bhamragarh in Gadchiroli but returned to Chhattisgarh within two days. Monitoring such cross-state boundaries, where jurisdictions change, poses a challenge, especially when wild animals move across contiguous habitats divided by political borders.

On November 11, 2023, a farmer in Gariyaband, Chhattisgarh, encountered CME3 and tragically lost his life. In early April 2024, CME3 entered the Kumaram Bheem Asifabad district in Telangana, where two farmers died in encounters on April 3 and 4. CME3 returned to Gadchiroli three days later and on April 25, another farmer died in a direct encounter with the tusker.

The following day, he severely injured three women in the Bhamragad area of Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, with two later succumbing to their injuries. After crossing back into Chhattisgarh, a woman was killed on May 2, 2024 in the Dhamtari region.

The media quickly reported CME3 as a ‘menace’, ‘rogue’, and ‘stray’, even as the Telangana Forest Department implemented a plan to mitigate potential human-elephant encounters.

Reports from the ground suggested these were chance encounters where people, unaware of the elephant’s presence, tried to defend their crops or inadvertently crossed his path. As elephants navigate lands their ancestors once roamed, people find themselves unexpectedly sharing space with these giants, often leading to negative interactions.

In Gadchiroli, where elephants arrived for the first time in over a century on October 22, 2022, crop damage and human fatalities were reported, alongside the deaths of two cow elephants due to deliberate electrocution, one of which left behind a calf adopted by the herd.

Human-elephant conflict is a sensitive issue that requires cooperation from all sectors, including forest departments, local communities, and state authorities. One often-overlooked aspect of conflict management is the role of the media.

More often than not, media coverage is alarmist. This not only incites unnecessary fear among civilians but also paints elephants in a negative light. While it is true that elephants can be dangerous and should not be approached, the media’s role should be to ease tensions and foster understanding, not to fuel fear.

As India develops its first human-animal conflict mitigation action plan, it is crucial that the media provides accurate information rather than sensational commentary on human-elephant interactions. The case of CME3 highlights that, despite recent fatal encounters, the tusker had not had a history of such incidents for most of his adult life.

Since the summer of 2024, CME3 had not been involved in further encounters with people, even as elephants continued to explore new regions. By assigning negative labels or depicting elephants as foreign to their habitats, the media creates a landscape of fear in areas traversed by these animals.

As elephants like CME3 explore new territories and people react to their movements, human-elephant conflict has become a growing concern. Unnatural elephant deaths increased from an average of 94 per year between 2009 and 2015 to 103 per year between 2016 and 2022, while human deaths rose from 250-300 between 1998 and 2001 to 493 per year between 2016 and 2021, alongside significant property and crop damage.

Electrocution, whether intentional or accidental, accounted for 69 per cent of all unnatural elephant deaths, followed by poisoning and poaching (17 per cent) and train collisions (14 per cent) between 2014 and 2022.

As habitats continue to be destroyed or fragmented, adverse human-elephant interactions are expected to increase. In such uncertain circumstances, the media must play a vital role in promoting coexistence.

Short-term, locally-relevant reporting should include practical information on how to avoid encounters with elephants and prevent retaliatory actions. Sharing updates on elephant movements through local forest departments and alerting local authorities to act swiftly to prevent incidents are crucial roles for the media.

Long-term, regular engagement is essential to communicate elephant behaviour and ecology, human-elephant relationships and to bring attention to the issues of crop loss and property damage. The media should also advocate for prompt action in favour of both people and elephants, especially when elephants cross state borders.

Social media is filled with evidence of human anger against elephants and elephants reacting to blocked passages. In this multi-sectoral challenge, the news media plays a crucial role in connecting people with elephants and fostering peaceful coexistence.

Aniruddha Dhamorikar works as Lead for Species Conservation with WWF-India in the Brahmaputra Landscape, based out of Tezpur, Assam and Sagnik Sengupta is the director of SAGE (Stripes & Green Earth Foundation), which works towards human-wildlife conflict mitigation, based out of Kolkata, West Bengal.

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth